


Do Nothing; But Trust Your Bird To Fly

by Chibihaku



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, I despise tagging my own work, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post Ealdor, Pre-Relationship, Season 1, minor animal death - bird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 09:41:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27349099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibihaku/pseuds/Chibihaku
Summary: When Arthur was eight, he met a boy with golden eyes and a penchant for mischief.When he was fourteen, he met a man with a bird on his arm, and a tattoo on his thigh.When he was twenty, he watched Merlin make a whirlwind and lie about it.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 206





	Do Nothing; But Trust Your Bird To Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Oops I did it again, I wrote nothing for two years and then came back with a solid monster of a fic that grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let me go until it was written.
> 
> This was supposed to be a short thing, under 5K to get the idea out of my head and it just. Kept. Growing. In fact, already she clamours that there's more to this story than what I've written, but that's a tale for another day and definitely after November, because I have Dragon Age plans for NaNo.
> 
> So I leave you with this - born of re-watching Merlin during lockdown and being beaten around the head with this idea and having it refuse. To make. Like Elsa.*
> 
> (*And let it go)

“Dragon,” the call echoes out through the chamber, rebounding off the walls, catching and snaring at the stalactites, “Dragon, I know you’re here.”

There is a beat of time, and then the beat of wings, displaced air rushing to and fro in a panic as the great creature comes into view. It has a wry, almost amused expression on it’s scaly face as it settles itself on the great rock pile that juts out like a bone in the centre of the immense cavern. It watches him for a moment, sizes him up, then lets out a huff of air that could almost be called a laugh.

“Arthur Pendragon,” It rumbles, “I had not thought to see _you_ darken the doorway of my cell.”

Arthur fights the urge to feel chagrined, as he stares up at the monster across from him. Each one of its teeth is the length of his torso, and he feels almost ridiculous, now, that he has brought the sword that hangs from his hip. What would one piece of metal be against a creature such as this, he wonders, even as he rolls his shoulders back and stands a little straighter, and fights the wave of gooseflesh that rolls across his skin as the dragon takes a great, snorting breath.

The beast stretches its neck languidly before settling back further onto the rock. “Why have you come?” It asks, “It is hardly to stare at your father’s greatest and oldest prize, or you would have done it years ago.”

Arthur frowns, reminded that he has come here with a purpose, that he had sat for hours in his room considering just who he could talk to about the particular problem that he had met with. He opens his mouth, hesitates for a moment, and closes it again.

“Oh, out with it,” the dragon rumbles, fixing him with a beady stare, “You are not a man to hesitate, nor will you ever be. If you have come it is for a reason; I would sooner have it than not.”

Nothing for it, then.

“Does Merlin have magic?”

The dragon blinks, Arthur has the distinct impression it is bemused. “What makes you ask, young King?”

“My father is the king.”

“Perhaps,” The dragon replies, “But you are King, and your father has no sovereignty over me.”

Arthur vaguely wonders how the dragon is managing the subtle inflection that made it feel like he was capitalising certain words, then he realises that the beast hasn’t answered his question.

He says as much.

The great beast snorts with amusement, “You are correct, I have not, but neither have you answered mine.”

“I believe - ” Begins Arthur, then finds the words caught in his throat, the still-fresh betrayal of Ealdor snagging them around the lump fixed in his chest. He makes a vague noise of frustration and tries again, “I have reason to believe he does.”

“And you have not approached another with this belief?” The dragon asks, stretching a wing, “Not Gaius who turns his eyes blindly to the world, or your father who rattles his sabre at the ghosts that pass in the night?”

“If Gaius knows, he would not answer honestly,” Arthur replies, folding his arms and schooling his expression into something other than mulish, “And I do not want to go to my father with vague suspicions and damn an innocent man.”

“And if Merlin were guilty?”

Here, Arthur hesitates again as betrayal and (of all things) guilt try to get in the way of his answer, “I’ve not seen anything that would give me cause to go to my father.”

“A politician’s answer.”

Arthur shrugs acceptance of that, then reaches past the pain and betrayal that threaten his voice, down deep into his soul and to the quiet truth of the matter, “I would keep Merlin’s secret, unless he tried to harm another with it.”

And he will, as much as it snags against everything his father has taught him to hold true.

“And hold it over him,” The dragon says carelessly, “Bring him to do darker and darker acts in the name of blackmail.”

Arthur squashes the curl of anger that threatens to rise, “Do you truly think so little of me?” Despite his best attempt, his voice still comes out hot and furious, and he feels the colour rising in his cheeks.

The dragon merely gives him another wry smile, eyes narrowing almost to slits, as its lips pull back to reveal a predator’s teeth. Arthur has the distinct impression that some sort of test had just taken place, and that, perhaps, he’s passed.

“I think little of Pendragons in general, young King,” The dragon says, “But It remains to be seen if you will be as hypocritical as your father.” The dragon shakes out its great head, smoke curling from its nostrils when it settles again. It seems, at least to Arthur, that this is somewhat of a show for his benefit, as much of a reminder of it’s bestial nature as its magical one.

As such, he quells the instinct to rush to his father’s defense and instead draws the beast’s attention to another fact, “You _still_ haven’t given me an answer to my question.”

At this, the dragon laughs, a gravelly sound that echoes around the chamber and goes on for near a full minute before it settles again with mirth alight in it’s eye. “That is because I cannot,” It tells him as it regards him like it is sizing him up for a meal, “Anything I answered that question with would undoubtedly be, in some way, a lie.”

“You are infuriating.”

“And you are impatient.”

Arthur glares at it, which only serves to further its amusement.

“I could give rise to your panic and tell you that, ‘yes, the boy has magic’, but that would be equally as incorrect as saying ‘no, he doesn’t.’” It tells him, after a time.

“One or the other has to be true,” Arthur snaps back, although a sinking feeling in his stomach makes known the fact that the creature would not be dancing as much as it is if his worst fears weren’t realised.

“Neither has to be true and neither is truly false,” The dragon retorts, “As saying that the Young Warlock - ” Arthur flinches, violently, “ - has magic is like saying that I have fire, or that you have humanity, or your father has cruelty.”

“It’s true, then,” Arthur feels his heart fall to his stomach, “You called him a warlock.”

The dragon shoots him a look that, on a face not so much the predator, would have been contempt, “The Young Warlock doesn’t _have_ magic,” the beast clarifies, harshly, “He _is_ Magic. As I am fire, and you are human.”

 _And Uther is cruel_ , remains unspoken, a small kindness which Arthur is grateful for, even as he can’t quite bring himself to deny the sentiment.

The beast then almost seems to soften, its voice falling in register, the gravel behind it less pronounced, “Merlin cannot be anything but Magic, no more than you can be anything but royalty, young King,” it says, “You would no less be King were you born a pauper, or a slave. Merlin would no less be Magic were he anything but Merlin.” 

“And what am I to do with that?” Arthur demands, feeling the anger rise in his chest again, the same anger that had gripped him at Ealdor when the whirlwind had sprung up in the dust and sand and Merlin had let the boy, Will, lie for him. “How am I supposed to reconcile _Merlin_ with what every law of the land, every good and noble person in my life, _including him_ , tells me is wrong?”

“I imagine with much the same hypocrisy as your father before you.”

Of its own accord, Arthur’s hand finds its way to the pommel of his sword. 

The dragon laughs.

“I am no more threatened by you, Arthur Pendragon, than you would be by a gnat. Put your sword away, young King, and listen to the wisdom of those who have lived much longer than you.” The dragon stretches out its front legs across the rock and pins him to his spot with a glare. “Merlin is not to blame for what the world has made him, and in doubting him now, when he has done more for you than you can ever know, you are doing him a disservice that even I did not believe you would be capable of.” 

Arthur says nothing, glaring at the great beast, and struggling to keep his temper from causing him to do something immensely foolish.

The dragon leans forward, turns his head to the side and says, calmly, “If you truly believe Merlin to be evil, leave this dungeon, take up that sword and run him through.” 

Arthur grips his sword tighter.

The facts snare in his head. Merlin is a sorcerer, sorcerers are evil, Merlin is his friend, Merlin is not evil, Merlin is a sorcerer. It’s a litany on a loop, over and over again, as what he knows to be true tears and wars at itself like a wounded boar. Still, one thought returns, again and again and again, “I… do not believe Merlin to be evil.”

“Then you have your answer, young King.” The dragon says, not unkindly.

Somehow Arthur is both more and less reassured by the Dragon’s words than he had thought to be, even as he thanks the beast and turns to make his way back up to the dungeons proper.

“Arthur,” The dragon says, as he approaches the gate to leave.

He turns at the doorway and looks back at the beast, who regards him as a snake would a mouse.

“I have not hurt you today because of the respect that I have for Merlin,” The creature says, “He is young, uncertain, and ruinous, but holds the makings of one of the finest men I have ever known. It is out of care for him that I have let you leave here unharmed.” The dragon gives one slow, steady blink, that chills Arthur to the bone. “If you return to this place and my sight again while your father still lives, I will not extend the courtesy a second time.”

Arthur knows it is foolish to feel indignant, but does so anyway. “Are you threatening me?”

“No, young King,” The dragon says, teeth and scales gleaming in the torchlight, “I am promising.”

It takes off into a hidden spot of the cave, before Arthur can reply.

* * *

“Father, please, he is an idiot and a fool, I beg you to reconsider.”

“The decision is made, Arthur, and cannot be undone. The boy will be your manservant until such a time as he proves unfit for the position.”

“Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, give him a bag of gold, or a fancy new horse, or, gods, a small spit of land in the middle of a swamp or something?” _He could build a castle_ , part of Arthur’s mind thought, only slightly hysterically.

Uther’s raised eyebrows contained paragraphs. “Is that to be the price of your life?”

“Perhaps not, but, truly, would he really know the difference?”

Uther’s frown promised that there was no winning this argument, but Arthur felt he had to try in any case.

“If you must reward him for pulling me out of the way of a blade, will you also reward the chandelier that fell? Can it be mounted on my wall as a testament to it’s bravery?”

“It can be arranged, if you continue this discussion when the matter has already been settled,” Uther retorted drily, “If the boy is as incompetent as you say, Arthur, you will be rid of him in a week, a month at most. Then we can consider the debt to him repaid and can send him away with no further obligations to fulfil.”

“Father, the first time we met, he called me a _prat_.” Arthur tried a different tack, telling himself that he sounded dignified, but offended, and not at all like he was whining.

“Did you deserve the title?”

“Does it matter? He’s a commoner!”

Uther’s grimace told Arthur that he’d probably answered the question - and lost the argument.

He tried to push it anyway, “Can we really allow that sort of disrespect in someone who is supposed to be the manservant to the prince? What if he embarrasses himself at a banquet? What if his lack of propriety costs us a peace treaty, or insults a fellow king?”

“Then his actions would fall on you and reflect on the undisciplined manner in which you keep your staff,” Uther replied, far too calm.

Arthur scowled at his father.

“Arthur,” Uther said, after a pause, “It will do you some good to take on responsibility, You’ve had precious little of it, apart from training your knights and that gods-awful mess with that falcon a few years back. A king needs to be able to effectively manage all of his people - ”

“ - Not just the ones with swords in their hands, I _know_ , Father.” Arthur finished, finally accepting the argument as lost. 

Uther sighed, settling into a rare moment of softness as he regarded his son, “Respect comes in many forms, just as there are multiple ways to win it. If this boy does not respect you, you must be the one to question why and to find the way to _make_ him respect you. Does he care little for rank? It will be your job to show him the importance of it.”

“Yes, Father,” Arthur replied, unable to put words to the disquiet in his belly as he considered that maybe he wanted to be respected for the man he was and not the title he held. It didn’t matter, in any case, _that_ was not an argument that would persuade his father.

“A simple solution is this; push the boy hard, try to find what will make him leave if you’re that desperate not to have him.” Uther’s lip quirked in that way he had when his wry humor wanted to win out. “If all else fails, get him to test your food. Eventually, someone will try to poison you. Gods know I wanted to sometimes when you were younger.”

Arthur snorted. “Thank you for that considerable vote of confidence, Father.” He said, as Uther waved a hand to dismiss him.

He left the room with a soft, proud smile at his father’s relaxed confidence - something that was becoming more and more difficult to win as the years passed. However, somewhere deep inside him he felt disquiet settling in his bones. 

He did not want a servant at all.

He definitely didn’t want one that might make a habit of calling him names.

* * *

When Arthur was fourteen years old, a man came to the castle with a bird on one arm and an offer for the king on his lips.

The man had seemed impossibly ancient to Arthur’s teenage sensibilities, but in reality he couldn’t have been any more than fifty, with a whip-thin frame covered in a long, dark canvas coat that had been oiled to protect it from the rain and was dusty with the road. The man’s dark head was bald, but his beard was salt-and-pepper black and hugged his chin in a close-cropped bramble of dirt and sweat. His eyes were startlingly, electrically green and narrowed at the world in the perpetual squint of someone used to looking at small objects that were increasingly far away. 

His bird, Arthur had thought, but would never admit, was strikingly beautiful. It was about the size of a cat, with startlingly white plumage, feathers tipped with black in a way that reminded Arthur of arrows. Its claws were the palest yellow, fading to grey at their wicked tips, and the same colouring marked the wickedly curved beak and the rings around it’s fathomously deep eyes. As Arthur watched in his position as Leon’s Squire, the bird extended one claw and scratched an itch behind its head, revealing a fine silver chain connected to a leather loop on it’s leg and another, larger, one around the wrist of the man who stood in front of the King.

“It can be trained to hunt, you say?” Uther said, leaning towards the man, eyes calculatingly shrewd.

The man bowed an assent, taking care not to jostle the beautiful creature on his arm, “Small animals, sire. Rabbits and pigeons, ferrets, the occasional small fox or vole.” 

“And why should we bother with a bird? My knights and nobles alike have arrows.”

The man gave an uncomfortable shimmy, but it appeared even to Arthur’s young eyes to be a staged reaction more than a genuine one. “Of course, Sire, but arrows damage pelts and splinter inside meat, making preparation that much more difficult. A gyrfalcon’s kill is that much cleaner than what a bolt can provide.”

“And a lot less predictable,” Uther rejoined, projecting disinterest, but betrayed by the spark that Arthur could see in his eyes. Across the room, Morgana smirked at Arthur in the way of that secret, infuriating communication she had which had said her assessment was the same as his, and that Uther was protesting out of a need to devalue what the man was selling, rather than to turn him away.

The man bowed his head, but it was a motion of respectful disagreement, “With respect, Sire, is the hunt not unpredictable of itself? In Spring a man may find nothing, in Winter, his stores may find themselves full of salted meat, based only upon the success or failure of the eyes of men. The eyes of birds are far keener than those of even your best shot, though the prey they take is smaller.”

Uther smiled, a tight-lipped, cold thing that Arthur recognised from many a bargain made before the throne. He said nothing, Arthur recognised it as a tactic that had been used before on _him_ when Uther believed that Arthur need only to squirm for the truth to make itself known.

But the man before the king did not respond as Arthur would have, where Arthur in his younger years would fidget uncomfortably, and more recently would snarl with Uther’s own temper, the man in front of the throne tilted his head like the bird he was holding, before he spoke once more to the king. “Birds can be trained not to do more than necessary damage with what they kill, require much less upkeep than a band of hunting dogs and encourage much less expenditure of their handler’s energy.”

“All positive traits,” Uther’s tone was dry with unvoiced derision, “But still hardly worth the time of this meeting.”

“Perhaps a demonstration is what your Highness requires?”

A flick of Uther’s hand, as regal as any statement. Easily interpreted as permission and just as easily not.

The man with the bird moved his head again, the midpoint between nod and bow and skirting the edges of propriety in ways that would have earnt Arthur a week’s subtle disapproval from the king. 

“If someone could throw a coin into the air,” The man said, to the room at large, but with his face directed towards Uther, who never took his eyes away as he nodded.

No-one in the room moved to do as bid, possibly because of how general the statement had been, possibly because they didn’t wish to court with Uther’s wrath. Arthur looked to Leon, who was watching the king, then to Gaius who had subtly raised his eyebrow at him in a warning read clear across the room.

Arthur smirked at him.

Gaius moved his head minutely in what possibly could have been nothing at all but more than likely was a disapproving shake.

And Arthur flicked a coin high into the air, partly because he was the prince and the only person he had to answer to was his father, and partly because he wanted to see what the beautiful bird would do.

It took off from the man’s arm in near silence, the rustle of it’s feathers the only soft noise in the room as it swooped and snatched the coin from the air at the top of an arc that seemed to slow to the point of stillness as the whole of Camelot watched. It darted back to it’s keeper, dropping the coin in his hands before settling on the man’s arm again, preening a wingfeather back into place.

Uther favoured his son with a withering look, but Morgana’s smile, when Arthur looked for it, was sharp and sweet and (for once) all approval.

“I suppose,” Said Uther, still glaring at his son, “Such a demonstration merits a trial period to determine the usefulness of the bird. One of the servants will see that you are settled, and reimbursement for your services will be discussed at a later time.”

The man with the bird bowed graciously and left the hall, following one of the servants and flicking Arthur’s coin back to him with a small, quick smirk as he went.

The man would be dead within the year, but Arthur didn’t know that, then, that he would be betrayed by an old and faded tattoo high on his left thigh, that meant he would die like so many others of his kind.

Arthur knew only the feeling of small victories and teenage daring, that could not be dampened by his father’s dark looks, or Leon’s icy disapproval that would meet him in the days to come.

* * *

“Oi, Cabbage-head.”

Arthur looks up, something sharp churning vicious circles in his chest.

There is a bowl of stew hovering just in front of his face, held in place by a long-fingered hand, spoon stuck into it at a jaunty angle that is seconds away from tipping and falling into the dirt next to their camp’s small fire. Arthur rescues the spoon from its predicament with little thought and a fierce scowl, shoving it back into the stew at a less lackadaisical angle, before taking the bowl and holding it in his lap. The slender hand in his vision curls and retreats and Arthur makes a concentrated effort not to watch it’s departure, curling his own fingers around his stew bowl and staring into the sludgy depths like they have the answers to the universe.

That, of course, is not enough for the owner of the hand. No, the owner of the hand has come looking to rile him, looking to needle, and has been thoroughly disappointed by this response.

“What, no ‘That’s not the proper way to address your prince, Merlin,’” The owner of the hand tries, “Or ‘Don’t you know how to talk to your betters, Merlin?’ or maybe even a clever insult about my ears?” Arthur looks up and sees Merlin’s frown, but sighs and looks down again.

“Okay, something is really wrong with you.” Merlin snaps in a slap-dodge, direct effort, as one last-ditch attempt to get the man on the log to engage. 

It half works, despite Arthur’s best efforts. “Perhaps, Merlin, I would just like to eat in peace?”

“Yeah, no, see, that would work on someone else but you know it won’t work on me. What’s wrong?” Despite Merlin’s coming to prod and poke at Arthur, when the prince looks up he sees genuine concern on his frie- his ser- the sor- _Merlin’s_ face, “I held that stew over your lap for a good minute, and even tipped it really sideways a few times to see if you’d notice and there was literally nothing. No reaction, not even a mild frown.”

Merlin kneels down in front of Arthur, peering up at him. It’s a Merlin move that Arthur recognises from the thousand small mannerisms the man has, Merlin’s way of cancelling out his slight height advantage, similar to how he stoops when they’re both standing. It puts their eyes on a level.

Merlin’s eyes are startlingly blue, Arthur thinks, not a hint of gold in them. 

_He_ is _Magic_ the dragon had said. The words roll about in Arthur’s head, across his senses, hit him in the heart with a pain like a sword gone through his chest. 

“Arthur?” A long-fingered hand comes out and gently touches Arthur’s knee. Arthur jerks away from it.

“Have you considered for a moment, Merlin, that if I had, _perhaps, in some strange world,_ wanted to talk about it, it certainly wouldn’t be a servant to whom I chose to speak?” 

Merlin blinks, rocking back onto his heels like Arthur’s snarl had been a physical blow and Arthur - 

Arthur _flinches._

Flinches like Merlin would attack him, which is ridiculous because Merlin had never, _could never_ \- 

_He_ is _Magic._

He is also looking at Arthur in hurt confusion, eyes so wide and so blue, lips pursed, hands wringing in his lap. “I just thought - ”

“Leave me.” Arthur snaps, biting back a sudden and ridiculous urge to apologise.

Merlin’s shocked expression twists into a scowl and with a huff he gets to his feet and stomps away, muttering about ungracious, supercilious _prats_ the entire while and taking with him a second bowl of stew that Arthur hadn’t noticed he’d put down. Without looking back at Arthur, he crosses the fire and sits huffily next to Gaius, who watches the whole exchange with eyes both confused and knowing. Merlin scowls and stabs his spoon angrily into his stew, and doesn’t reply when Gaius asks him in a soft undertone what’s wrong. And Arthur, in his heart of hearts, is _glad_ that Merlin stormed away, because it means that Merlin took his magic with him, took his complications and his problems and his short temper and his _whirlwinds_ that he let his friends take the blame for, and his - 

It has been four days.

Four days since he’d let Merlin have the lie that Will had made the whirlwind.

Since he’d asked “Who did that?” In a quietly damning tone for all involved and had seen Merlin stiffen head to toe in a single, terrified moment, halfway through saying his name before Will had stepped in, furious and forceful.

Four days since Ealdor, two since the dragon, and only yesterday they’d been sent out on this damnable patrol, when the reports had come through of strange noises at night from an abandoned ruin on the eastern side of the kingdom, just near the border. The reports had mentioned a strange creature, as well, and Uther had ordered his son and a handful of knights to investigate, and to take Gaius along so that hopefully his knowledge could solve the problem in the shortest amount of time.

And although Merlin was happy to be away from Arthur for a time, or from Gaius if pressed, there would never be a situation where he would willingly be away from both, so the sor - Merlin, _Merlin_ , had come as well.

Arthur places the bowl of stew down on the ground in front of him with more force than necessary and stands, shoving a hand through his hair. He steps over the log he’d been sitting on, moves away from the fire, moves away from the camp, and away from Merlin’s stupidly blue eyes that had never betrayed who and what he was to Arthur at all, not once in the time he’d known him. He stomps through the trees, past the horses, with a nod to the guard on watch in order to let him know that he was going. The forest is cool and dark around him, sparse and dry and on a vaguely uphill slope that Arthur follows with little thought or reason to it.

His walk eventually takes him to the top of a small ridge, where a natural clearing has formed because of a rocky outcrop. He stands upon it and looks out over the forest below and around him, at the clouds smearing a perfectly blue sky above. 

So many things are blue.

A bird hovers on a thermal not too far away, wings spread as it lazily catches the air and lifts itself above the land. It has a grey back and a brown-striped front, a sparrow-hawk, small and fierce and mighty above the land.

Arthur puts his fingers to his lips and whistles, sharply, the way he’d learnt when he was fourteen to call back in the gyrfalcon he’d been gifted.

The sparrow-hawk ignores him.

They all do.

* * *

It is hardly Merlin’s fault, nor Will’s for that matter, that their lie had been damned too long ago for either of them to remember.

It had been when Arthur was eight, on one of his father’s infrequent visits of other kingdoms, a parade meant in Arthur’s honour, to show off the young prince to their neighbours. For all it was touted as a parade, the journey had also been bound in secrecy, Arthur with henna in his hair that his father had gotten at great cost from the Silk Road to hide his identity and his value from all but those kings and queens who were supposed to see it. Arthur had never properly understood as a child how precious he had been to Uther, that the man had honed him as a warrior to ensure Arthur could protect himself from harm, even as he’d hidden him away in Camelot’s borders as much as he was able. 

Even as a child he’d found his father’s paranoia in this matter chafing, particularly when a manservant had been none-too-gentle with ensuring that every last strand of his golden hair had turned mud brown, but the softer, kinder looks he’d received when his visage was less Ygraine and more Uther had been something he treasured.

“On this trip,” Uther had said in a rare moment of parental care, reaching out and smoothing brown-stained locks back from Arthur’s forehead, “Unless I have introduced you otherwise, your name is Wort and you are of no relation to me.”

“I understand, Father.” Arthur told him, even though he didn’t.

Uther’s nod had been tender, almost kind, and the kiss the man pressed to the brow of his son had been one of a handful spread few and far between. Arthur had thought nothing more of the oddness of it as they travelled across Camelot’s border, only the novelty of it, the anonymity, the way that there was no hint of simple recognition and deference in the eyes of those who saw him. 

In fact, he had thought, as he’d made an escape from his tutor, being unrecognisable was the most convenient thing he’d ever encountered. No-one thought to stop him as he ducked under a fence post and wandered absently to the edge of the village, no-one thought to call him back as he made his way to a tree he’d seen on the way in that he’d desperately wanted to climb. 

It was an old apple tree that Arthur was bound for, one gnarled and tinted with the first spring blossom, with a knot in the wood at just the right level, Arthur had thought, to put one’s boot on and _push_ enough to get leverage to grab the lowermost branch. From there, he knew, it would be a matter of walking his feet up the trunk or hauling himself up with his arms to settle into the branch or possibly get higher, although with limited coverage to protect him if someone should come and look for him.

Still, to climb a tree was a delight he had seldom experienced, and his memory was full of fussy old nurses and well-meaning servants chasing him away from the trees on Camelot’s grounds before he could get very far.

Arthur was entirely thrilled by the prospect of not-being-interrupted as he did-what-boys-do, and as such, was thoroughly disappointed upon the realisation that _someone was already in his tree_ when he approached it _._

“Will,” said the person in his tree, “If you’re trying to sneak up on me you shouldn’t really be stomping like Old Johaan’s Cow when it got stuck on that rock face last winter.”

With as much fury as he could muster, (which, given he was the crown prince, mildly selfish and used to getting his own way, was not an inconsiderable amount) he ignored what the boy said and snarled up into the tree, “What do you think _you’re_ doing?”

The boy in the tree startled, hands flailing out to either side of him as he slipped backwards and fell, and for a moment, panic gripped Arthur deep as he thought _Oh, gods, I’ve_ killed _someone!_ Before the boy in the tree stopped toppling, legs splayed, arms wide - 

\- In midair.

He was upside down, ears sticking out from his face, and Arthur managed one startlingly brief impression of a funny-looking face with golden eyes peering at him in muted shock, before the boy said, “Oh, _rats_ ,” and his face blurred and softened and became impossible to look at.

“What -” Tried Arthur,

“Rats, rats, _rats_ ,” Said the boy,

“You’re a - ” Arthur began again,

“You aren’t Will,” The boy said in a strangled voice,

“Well, no, I’m not but -”

“Mum is going to _kill me_ ,” The boy cut over him, before Arthur could finish,

“You just did - ”

Another strangled noise, “I’m so very, _very_ , dead.”

“ _How_ are you _upside-down_?” Arthur said, almost a shout over the boy’s nonsensical whining.

The boy with the golden eyes (because that was all that Arthur could tell about his face, the rest kept shifting and blurring and being generally difficult to focus on) blinked at him, then at himself.

“Er,” He said, “I’m not?”

Arthur favoured him with a Look. It was one that he’d seen his father and Gaius do more times than he could count, one that said “Do you really think I’m that stupid?” Without him having to say a word.

The boy, somehow, despite his twisty face, managed to look embarrassed. “Yeah, I didn’t think that would work.”

The boy moved then, or perhaps the world moved around him, Arthur couldn’t really tell, but he flipped himself upright in midair and gently floated down to the ground. It really would have been a graceful move if it hadn’t seemed to all let go at just a second too early and he landed on his bottom in an undignified sprawl on the ground. “Ow,” He said.

“What’s wrong with your face?”

The boy got to his feet, rubbing at his bottom, “That’s a bit rude, isn’t it?” He asked, looking at Arthur with disapproval.

“It’s wiggly.”

“And yours is straight lines and snobbery, but you don’t see me _saying_ it.”

Arthur frowned, “You really shouldn’t speak to me that way,” He said, “I’m - ”

And then his father’s voice sounded in his head, soft and careful and pointed, _“On this trip, your name is Wort unless I introduce you otherwise”_ And he choked around the end of his sentence.

The boy was brushing his dirty palms against his breeches, seemingly unconcerned for the mess they left behind. “You’re what, then?” He asked, shoving his hands into his pockets and frowning.

“Nobody.” He’d meant for it to come out cagey, but it had come out confused and wondering instead, because that was something he’d never been before.

“Nobody?” The boy parroted, frowning at him, “You didn’t sound like you were thinking you were nobody a moment ago.”

“I guess,” Said Arthur, looking at the boy with the golden eyes, “We’ve both got secrets to keep.”

The boy grinned like a moonbeam, “I’ll keep yours if you keep mine,” He said, spitting on his hand and holding it out to Arthur with childish ease.

Feeling mildly disgusted, Arthur reached out to shake it.

“No, you gotta do the thing with the - What sort of cabbage-head _are you_ anyw - Ow! What are you going around hitting people for?”

* * *

“Arthur,” Morgana’s voice, in that tone, never boded well for Arthur.

“Morgana,” Arthur matched tone for tone, tilting his head, folding his arms, sly smirk working it’s way across his face, “To what do I owe the - well, I’m not sure I can say pleasure.”

Morgana’s mouth twisted, sharp and quick, before smoothing out into something a lot less like she’d eaten a sour lemon and more like a resemblance of tolerance. “I was wondering if I might have a word.” 

“By all means, you may have several.”

Disappointingly, Morgana didn’t rise to the bait, instead she looked pointedly at the openness of the corridor that Arthur had found himself in, where he was resting absently by the window, looking out on the training fields down below, “A private word, Arthur, if it pleases.”

“Morgana - ”

She daintily raised her eyebrows at him.

It should have taken more than that, It really should have. 

“Very well,” Arthur said gruffly, gesturing them to a small, private sitting room off the passage. 

He opened the door for them and Morgana entered the room, moving to the seat that had been placed by the room’s small window. Arthur joined her, but remained standing, leaning against the wall.

“Gaius had to send someone looking for Merlin last night,” Morgana said, fingers resting on the arm of her chair, “He was worried sick because Merlin had not come in for dinner, nor supper later. In fact, he hadn’t even seen Merlin for breakfast that morning, and had assumed that the poor boy had left before first light. He was near sick with worry.” Morgana was speaking in a quiet, dangerous sort of voice, one that promised Arthur despair should he think to interrupt. “Gaius had asked for Merlin to help him, you see, the night before, when he was doing his medical rounds of the town, to help Merlin learn more on his apprenticeship. Merlin had never shown up, and Gaius had to do the rounds himself, beside himself with worry the whole time as he was afraid that something had happened to his apprentice.”

“What _is_ your point, Morgana?”

“Do you know where Gwen finally found Merlin, just after the final bell?” The question was deceptively sweet.

“I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”

“She found him, _Arthur Pendragon_ , outside the box of your champion stallion, with three bruised ribs and a concussion. Apparently _no one_ had thought to warn him not to walk up behind a war-horse.” The implication in that sentence was very strong that Morgana believed it should have been Arthur who warned him about a war-horse’s’ training.

“He’s a country boy, surely he knows something about horses,” Arthur complained, “It’s hardly my fault that he got kicked.”

“Have you actually interacted with a draught-horse at all in your life?” Morgana snapped, “They’re hardly the same league as a war-horse and you know it. Merlin was never to know unless _someone_ warned him.”

“Then, surely, the stable-boy could have -”

“No he could not have, because he had already gone to bed for the night when Merlin came in to muck out your horses, which is _not_ his job, and apparently was the last thing he had to do on a list of chores longer than my arm.”

“It’s his job if I say it’s his job,” Arthur shot back, “And if he doesn’t like it, he can quit.”

Morgana stilled, soft and deadly next to him, “It is not _Merlin’s_ fault that the king put him in your care,” She said, her voice like a honeyed knife, “And it is _hardly_ fair to bring him into your little temper tantrum at your father.”

“Of course, you’re right. Perhaps _I_ should start bringing _him_ breakfast, then.”

Morgana made a sound through her teeth that wasn’t quite a hiss, but was close. “Don’t you try to bait me, Arthur Pendragon,” She said, “Not when you are the one who is behaving monstrously to that poor boy.”

“ _That poor boy_ is nineteen years old and if he can’t handle being in my service, he should leave it.”

Morgana closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out very slowly as she visibly brought herself back under control. 

“You might think he’s nothing but a nuisance, Arthur, but he’s been in your service two weeks and he’s already saved both your life and your reputation. If you would, for one moment, overlook the fact that he refuses to let you be a bully, you might see that he is actually something that you should _value._ ”

“And I’ll just despair of ever having clean socks again, shall I? Or a breakfast that’s actually befitting a prince?”

“Perhaps if you gave him time to complete his work _properly_ , you would get those things.”

Arthur hated it when Morgana brought up inarguable points like that one, especially when she was right.

“You should see him,” Morgana said, when it was obvious that he wasn’t going to answer her, “Or at least enquire with Gaius as to whether he’s alright.”

“Morgana, he’s a servant.”

“He’s not a pawn, Arthur, in the power struggle between you and your father. He’s a _person._ And just because you feel you can treat him like a toy, doesn’t mean you should.” She sighed, “You might think you’re the cock of the walk right now and that whatever you say must go, but you’re being more a magpie; and Merlin is your spun glass in sunlight, so tempting and flashy and new.” Morgana paused for breath, “As much as you don’t like to hear it, Arthur Pendragon, if you continue like this, you could _break_ that boy. You nearly did, yesterday.”

Morgana closed her eyes, relaxed her hands where they had clenched on her chair and visibly forced herself to relax.

“I don’t want a boy to be worked to death on your conscience,” She said, in a rare moment of honesty between them, “Least of all because I know you’re better than that and Merlin would help you to be even _more_ if you let him.”

Arthur looked out the window because if he looked at Morgana he just might have done something foolish like admit she was right.

“Go see him,” Morgana said quietly, “I won’t force you to apologise, but you - you should at least see him.”

“...I will.”

* * *

The bird has long since left the area by the time Arthur decides to head back to the camp proper. 

The knight on watch nods at him and Arthur nods back, carefully stepping around the twigs and rocks that litter the path, and giving a gentle slap to the flank of his horse as he passes it. He’s quiet, but not deliberately so, it’s just an aftereffect of the years of training he’s had as a knight, the skills he was forced to develop until they were innate, being able to move without chainmail rustling or plates of armour sliding over one another. As such, it’s purely by accident that he overhears ( _eavesdrops on_ , a voice inside him accuses) Merlin and Gaius’ conversation from where he ends up, just inside the tree line between the camp and the river.

“-don’t know what I’ve done wrong.” Merlin says, sounding ruined. “I know he thinks I’m hopeless, but he’s never been this spiteful about it before.”

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that,” Gaius says, soft and fatherly, in a way that he’s never been towards Arthur in all his years. “Everyone has their off weeks, Merlin.”

“He keeps looking at me like I’ve salted the ground his crops grow on,” Merlin continues, like Gaius hasn’t interjected, “Or like he’s waiting for me to do something, say something, so he can cast me from his sight like yesterday’s chickenbones.”

“Merlin, you know he’s mercurial.”

Merlin gives a little watery snort, “You mean he’s a toss-pot,” He says, but the insult lacks it’s usual vehemence. It’s like it’s said for form alone.

“Merlin,” The reproach is gentle, lacking it’s normal heat.

“Sorry,” Says Merlin, not sounding it, “Anyway, I shouldn’t be talking about this when we’ve got more important things to be thinking of.”

If Merlin’s voice is a little choked, a little raspy, Gaius does him the mercy of not mentioning it. 

“The ruins,” Gaius says, and Merlin makes a vague noise of agreement. 

“You think there’s anything to it? Or are we just chasing ghosts?”

“With your luck, my dear boy, it _will_ be ghosts.”

“Oh, don’t even tempt fate, Gaius,” Merlin says, and the fear that’s usually in his voice when the supernatural comes up in his presence is missing. He sounds… not cheerful, no, his voice is still too watery and worn for that, but like he’s affecting it. “I’m hoping for the wind whistling through a rock, personally. Although with the mood Himself is in, I’d probably wear that one on the way home.”

“Merlin - ”

“Oh, yes, that’s how it’ll start,” Merlin says, laugh slightly bitter, “But he’ll draw out the first bit that way he does - _Mer_ lin. You’ve never heard such derision in a syllable, Gaius.” The laugh dies away as quickly as it comes, sudden with realisation. “He’s not said it since _Ealdor_.”

“Perhaps,” Gaius says, “Will saying what he did -”

“Oh yes,” Merlin’s voice is sharp as glass, brittle and broken, “Because if learning I possibly had a friend who was a sorcerer is grounds for this much hate then I’d hate to see what happens if he ever-”

“Merlin,” This time, the word is a warning, sharp and succinct, and when Merlin apologises, he sounds like he means it.

Arthur’s stomach churns again, the back of his throat tastes like bile. 

It’s not a confession, not in so many words, but hearing Merlin have the words at the tip of his tongue is a body blow. It’s an unblocked mace, sweeping low and hard. And there’s a jarring counterpoint of sword and shield that stands as the rest of the contents of the conversation.

Merlin’s worrying over Arthur’s mood like a hen, and part of Arthur is loudly trying to convince the rest of him that those are not the actions of a sorcerer out to kill him. But Uther’s voice is there as well, the voice of reason that Arthur has known since childhood, soft and chiding as a viper, a constant, desperate warning that magic is evil.

“You mustn’t ever say things like that, my boy, my heart can’t take it.”

“I know, Gaius, I’m sorry,” Merlin says, “It just hurts, you know, to know what’s going to happen if he ever finds out.”

The old man sighs, as Arthur’s hands tremble before he clenches them into fists. “Arthur is Uther’s _son_ ,” Gaius says, and Arthur should move, this conversation isn’t for him, and it’s a betrayal of trust even standing here, let alone listening.

“Oh, no, thanks for that, I’d never noticed it before.”

Never mind that Merlin betrayed Arthur’s trust first.

There’s a beat of silence, loaded with disapproval, before Merlin coughs, “Sorry,” He says.

“Arthur is Uther’s son,” Gaius says again, “And has inherited his prejudices. Were he able to form his own opinion, matters might have been different, but - ”

“But Uther’s at his ear all the time, and there’s only so long you can go with constantly hearing something before it sounds true, even when you know it’s not.” Merlin sighs, a tiny sound, barely a puff of air. Arthur’s body thrums with awareness of him, wants to know what emotion is playing across his face, but knows that if he moves, this conversation will stop like it has never been. “Will’s just the same as him, he was so _convinced_ about Arthur, without even knowing him, and Arthur’s the same about, well, you know. And neither of them is speaking with their own words.”

There’s a pause.

“Was.” Merlin says, voice suddenly sounding choked, “Has been - shit, I miss him.”

Gaius doesn’t even scold Merlin for the language, “It will get easier.”

“I can’t… I can’t be like this, Gaius.” Says Merlin, as he draws a shaky breath, “I’ve got to - got to be at my _best_ and I - ”

There’s a rustle, and when Merlin speaks next, his voice is muffled, like he’s speaking into someone’s shoulder,

“I feel like I’ve lost both of them.”

He sounds lost, so lost, and Arthur’s heart seizes for a moment, reminds him that Merlin’s grief is just four days old.

Arthur has no map points to guide him, here. He’s never lost like this, a best friend and brother in all but birth. Oh, he’s had men fall in battle, but he’s never lost one of those who are closest and dearest to him. Even Ygraine, with all her death still gripped his father, was something that Arthur neither truly felt or knew, the hurt so old and faint and abstract that he wondered sometimes if he felt it at all. 

But Merlin’s heart has always been kinder than Arthur’s, more prone to both love and bruises, and this hurt is still so very fresh. 

And Merlin, Merlin who is now softly saying to Gaius that Arthur hadn’t even touched his food, voice tight with concern and concealed grief, even as Gaius gently chides and cajoles him into a better mood, Merlin is magic.

Arthur moves away from the conversation, to the flaps of the tent that have been set up for his benefit for the night. He’s grateful for the distance between him and Merlin’s soft, accusing, grief-stricken words.

He knows he can’t face them right now.

He wonders if that makes him a coward.

* * *

The man with the bird stood a little away from the guard station on the west wall of the lower town. He’d exchanged his canvas coat for a cloak lined with badger fur, the black and white stripes of it gently clashing with the brown-dyed wool of its outer layer. The garment looked homemade and worn and was patched and darned in places, permanent stains riding up from the hem and almost to the man’s knees from seasons of mud and sleet and slush and snow. His other clothing was similarly homespun, a layered tunic and scarf, and fleeced breeches and boots to keep out the chill. The only garment on him that looked like it was worth any amount of coin was the leather bracer that was strapped from the man’s wrist to elbow, which was covered in a series of vine-like designs and that his bird currently rested on, the leather protecting the man from the gyrfalcon’s wicked looking claws.

“Your highness,” The man said, neither turning, nor bowing.

“Falconer.”

“You have come from your proving.” The man said, bypassing the expected small talk that he always gave to the king.

“How did you - ”

The man smirked, looking out on the fields below, where Camelot capes spilt behind their knights like blood on the snow, and the crash of training swords carried faintly on the wind.

“You watched.”

“I saw,” The man corrected, calmly. “Your father will be proud.”

“He’ll be furious that it wasn’t a ceremony in front of the court,” Arthur said, leaning against the walkway’s parapet.

“There is always time for ceremonies later,” The man said, stroking his bird absently, “Would you have accepted the victory if it had been in a situation where it were forced on you?”

“No,” Arthur said. In fact, that was the very reason that he’d insisted to Leon that it be done in the way it had been - Arthur versing Leon in a two minute bout to prove that he was ready for the knighthood. He’d not even mentioned it to his father and had pulled rank on Leon to ensure that the other man wouldn’t, either. It would never be a truly fair fight, Arthur knew, not when he was the crown prince and knighthood was to be expected of him, but this was as close as he knew how to make it.

Swordplay was one thing that he’d never been given, that he’d had to earn. And he’d always wanted his knighthood to be the same.

The bird on the falconer’s wrist made a small chittering noise. The man smiled fondly at it, taking off it’s cap and the strap that affixed it’s chain to his wrist. “Off you go, then.” He said to it, and the bird dropped off his wrist, spreading its wings in a graceful movement and taking to the air in one elegant sweep.

“Aren’t you afraid it’s not going to come back?”

“Why wouldn’t she?” The man asked, watching as the bird took to the frozen blue sky, “She knows who feeds her in winter, and keeps her bedding dry in summer rains.”

“But she’s a creature of the sky, surely she has more freedom out there than you can ever give her.”

“She does,” The man said, “And this is her taste of it - her payment for what she brings me when she hunts.”

“But she could leave and never return at a whim,” Arthur argued, as the bird rose into the sky like a white speck.

“Then I must simply trust her not to,” The man replied. 

Arthur frowned, staring at the bird as it flew high above Camelot in lazy circles. 

“We all make choices, Your Highness,” The falconer says, “Whether we are bird or beast, pauper or prince. She chooses to come to me when I call her because she trusts that I will keep her safe. I choose to let her fly because I trust that she will return when I call. A man is never made by the sum of his words, but of the consequences of his choices, and those choices are never made alone, even the ones that we think we are making that way.”

“A king makes all his choices alone.”

“Does he choose what to have for dinner? How the servants will dress the pheasant or the rabbit? Does he go through each bag of roots and throw out the mouldy carrots before they can touch his plate? Does he choose how long to boil the cabbage, to pickle the onion, or how best to salt the meat to store for later?”

“Well, not those choices, obviously.”

The falconer’s lips twitched like he was reperessing a smile, “Obviously,” He agreed.

The bird let out a call, wheeled once, then tucked its wings and plummeted towards the ground. Arthur gasped, heart in his throat as he watched the bird dive, dive, dive, long past the point where he thought that surely it would be impossible to recover, that surely she would crash and break her neck. Then, her wings snapped out and her body jerked, talons sweeping forward in a strike.

She flapped her wings furiously against the ground and slowly, slowly lifted, something dangling dead between her claws.

Arthur let out the breath that he didn’t know he’d been holding. 

“Perhaps, then,” The falconer said, watching his bird wheel slowly back towards him, “A king stands on all fronts of a battlefield and makes the choices of each individual soldier, when to swing their sword, when to duck? Or does he merely divide his forces dependent on their strengths, yet give every order to the archers to loose their volleys, or be at the head of every party’s call to charge?”

This conversation felt weakly like treason, but strongly like commonsense, and Arthur found his growing discomfort was worth the price of listening. 

“A king,” The falconer continued, “chooses his knights, and his knights choose their squires. A king trusts his knights to make their choices, and that those choices are beneficial to kingdom and country, that at the end of the war his side will be victorious. He hopes that his trust is well-placed, that his knights haven’t chosen to follow another king and betray him, but he never truly knows.”

“If they fear him enough - ”

“If my bird _feared_ me, she would never return.” 

The bird dropped a rabbit at the falconer’s feet, then landed gracefully on the parapet next to him and daintily began to preen it’s bloodstained claws.

The falconer smiled at it, softly, leaning over to stroke it’s snowy head.

“But, young prince,” Said the falconer, as he looked at his bird with affection, “I am merely a falconer and you are to be a king, and perhaps you are more knowledgeable of such things than I. After all, I do nought but trust my bird to fly.”

* * *

It would be a lot easier to think of Merlin as evil, Arthur muses, if he weren’t so capriciously, sickeningly _good_.

Oh, not as a _manservant_ , no, there are some things that one simply couldn’t teach a person when they aren’t interested in learning, and Merlin’s continual insistence on substandard care is very slowly (Arthur fears) becoming somewhat of a badge of pride for the man. Take this morning, as an example. Arthur has woken with (thankfully) clean chainmail and armour spread and ready to wear, but his breeches still have a hole just above the knee and his socks don’t match. Merlin had also been entirely absent when it came time for Arthur to wake and dress, but upon emerging from his tent Arthur finds that every waterskin in the camp has been filled, the fire has dutifully been re-stoked and thick slices of bread left to toast on sticks around it, and the horses are stood, content, fed and saddled, at the side of the camp, at a point of easy access for when they need to leave, but not so close that they will get in the way of the bleary-eyed knights stumbling from their bedrolls. 

Given that even Gaius is still blinking awake in the predawn light, and the night-watch is just stumbling back into camp proper now, it only really left one person who could possibly have readied them to leave.

Which, Arthur realises, is the crux of the issue he is having with Merlin.

Merlin is a warlock, he’s Magic, and if he _is,_ then it follows that he’s also supposed to be evil. But Arthur highly doubts that an evil man would spend the time ensuring through labour alone that other men’s needs are met. At least, not in the way that Merlin does it, with almost no forethought and an instinctual understanding of the chores that are most important to the success of the day. 

Because, really, a hole in Arthur’s breeches is an annoyance, but an empty waterskin is a death sentence for a fool caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. And as much as Arthur tries to make believe otherwise, it is each knight’s own responsibility to ensure that their skins are full, and not in any way Merlin’s. So, this means that although Merlin’s act is a tiny one - selfless and generous and unnecessary - when he takes _all_ the skins to be filled at the river although he could just take Arthur’s; try as he might, Arthur can’t seem to believe that someone truly black-hearted would think to do it, especially not with the careless grace that Merlin consistently manages.

Arthur also believes that a dark and evil wizard probably wouldn’t waste time (when no-one could see him) scratching Arthur’s charger behind the ears, cooing sweet nothings at it like it’s a show pony and not a battle-hardened stallion, which is precisely what he finds Merlin doing.

“Who’s a good horse? Yes you are, yes you _are_ , you fine strapping gent, and I’ve got some sugar cubes just for you some...where… in my pack - Ah, there they are.”

“I do believe,” Says Arthur, “That you will single-handedly be the ruin of every last one of my destriers.” 

Merlin looks up from where the horse is mouthing sugar off his palm, and Arthur almost steps back at what he sees.

Merlin’s eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, his lips are far too pale, and he’s wearing yesterday’s clothes (although that’s fairly standard for the servant on trips like this.) His long fingers are trembling and the hand not spoiling Arthur’s horse is wrapped around it’s reins helping him to stand in the face of him swaying like he can’t quite find his balance. 

His smile, when it comes, is the merest shadow of itself, like someone had described Merlin’s smile to him and he’d tried his best to copy it and missed. 

Arthur’s heart _aches_.

“ _Merlin_ ,” He breathes, “Have you -”

“I thought it best to get the horses in a good mood, Sire,” Merlin says, distinctly over the top of whatever Arthur had been about to say, _have you slept, have you eaten? Have you stopped worrying about me at_ all _since yesterday afternoon?_ “We’ve got a fair trek ahead of us if we want to reach the ruins by midafternoon.”

“You look ex-”

“And all of the things but what you were sleeping in are already packed and good to go.”

“Did you even -” 

“I’ve just got to do the tent, yet, but we can be ready as soon as the knights are.”

Arthur glares at Merlin, who responds with a guileless look, the kind that confirms that Merlin is prepared to dance as long as he needs to, to avoid Arthur showing him any care.

So Arthur throws his vambrace at him.

Merlin startles, and actually manages to catch the damn thing, before his surprise at _that_ causes him to drop it. The horse next to him snorts a bit and rolls his eyes at the flailing, but it’s a war-horse, bred to withstand scarier things than a gangly lad throwing his limbs about. 

“What was _that_ for, you great _prat_?”

Arthur gives a haughty sniff, and settles his weight over one leg, folding his arms over his chest, “ _That_ ,” He says, gesturing at the vambrace where it lies limply against Merlin’s foot, “Is supposed to be on my _arm_ , Merlin.”

“Well then it’s no good bloody _throwing_ it at me, is it?”

“It is,” Says Arthur coolly, “When the reason it is not on my arm is because my useless manservant deigned not to dress me this morning.”

Arthur might have imagined it, but when Merlin bent to pick up the vambrace from the dirt, he just might have been smiling. Faintly, to be sure, but _there_. “I should probably fix that for you, then, Sire.” 

It’s a weird sort of peace offering, and one Arthur also regrets moments later when he remembers that having Merlin _dress_ him also involves Merlin _touching_ him, and he can’t quite stop himself from stiffening when Merlin’s hand goes to his shoulder.

The grin that had been beginning to build on Merlin’s face vanishes instantly.

Merlin’s hands are efficient and practised on his arm, nothing at all casual and easy about the touch as buckles are pulled and fastened just _so_ without anything more than the expected courtesy. It seems, almost, like suddenly he can’t do this job fast enough, that in Arthur’s flinch the man has betrayed something, and Arthur (who has never been _good_ at this, _damn_ it) can’t seem to find a way to claw this back into something resembling normal.

All too quickly, Merlin’s hands move away, one back to the stallion’s neck, absently petting like he’s pulling strength from the solidity of Arthur’s horse. “Will that be all, Sire?” He asks, in a glassy, distant voice, that matches the carefully blank expression he’s got on his face.

 _No,_ Arthur thinks, _No it is_ not _all, you’re a_ sorcerer, _you don’t get to make me feel guilty for being scared, for not_ trusting _when it’s you who has been lying!_

“I’ll finish up the horses, Merlin. Get some breakfast, would you? You’re even more hopeless than normal when you’re hungry.”

* * *

“Are you going to keep my apprentice, Sire, or will you give him back one day? I’d like to know now, if I may, so as to plan around it.”

Arthur looked up from his soup, “Pardon, Gaius?”

The physician was frowning at Arthur, rather harder than he ever had before.

“And how many pieces would you give him back in, as well? I’d much prefer for it to be _one_ but I could make do with two if I must, as long as you leave his heart alone.”

The man was stood in front of Arthur’s desk, expression serene and complacent, hands folded tightly behind his back. He looked the picture of the mild servant that Arthur knew, which was why his words were quite baffling.

“Have I done something… wrong?” Arthur hedged, feeling like he was six again beneath the physician’s stare. He didn’t quite know why, however, as even Gaius’ signature disappointed eyebrow had yet to make an appearance.

“Of course not, Sire, only I was under the impression that you hadn’t meant to keep him and I was planning accordingly. I’m fairly certain, however, that you would not have defied your father to save his life were he only on loan.”

“On loan? Keep him? Gaius, he’s not a _toy_.”

Gaius’s face settled into something sharp, and Arthur realised he’d walked into a trap. 

“Indeed he isn’t.”

“Good,” Arthur said awkwardly, “Then we are agreed.” He moved to take another mouthful of his soup.

“It is rather like you’ve been treating him as one, though.” The physician observed mildly, “Calling him a fool to the face of the king, making him the butt of your not-infrequent jokes, abandoning his trust the moment things don’t work out as you will them.”

“What was I supposed to do, Gaius? He called himself a sorcerer, in front of the _king_. If I hadn’t said he were addled -”

“Oh, I understand why you did it, My Lord, what I fail to recognise is why you haven’t apologised for it.”

This was rather like Morgana all over again.

“I saved his life!”

“Yes, and _he_ spent a night in the dungeon for _daring to survive_.” 

There was more to this than what Gaius was saying, Arthur knew, but Arthur couldn’t see a way to make the old man come out with it. “I have no control over the actions of my father,” He said, still feeling mildly guilty when he remembered the look on Uther’s face at Arthur being thwarted from his lesson, and the way that Merlin had been the one to suffer for it.

“And yet you have placed Merlin firmly in his notice,” Gaius shot back, “I’m sure he would have found a way to do it himself, eventually, but that is not a place where I want the boy to be.”

For some reason, Arthur thought then of a beautiful white gyrfalcon, lying on the snow, with its neck broken.

Arthur’s hand tried to clench into a fist - it was an effort to hold it still. “It’s not like I want him there, either,” He said, voice just above a whisper. He went back to eating his soup, just for something to occupy his hands.

The physician was quiet for a long while, seemingly content just to stare at Arthur, some thought or another ticking away behind his eyes.

“Have a care with him, Arthur,” Gaius said eventually, voice turned gentle, “He’s halfway devoted to you already, and hearts are much more fragile than birds.”

* * *

“So what, precisely, are we doing?”

The boy with the golden eyes shushed him fiercely. “We’re on a hunt,” He said, in an undertone.

“A hunt.”

“Keep your voice down!”

“A hunt,” Arthur said, at exactly the same level of loudness, “For what, exactly?”

“Look, you’re going to get us caught if you don’t keep it down,” Said the boy, “Haven’t you ever been on a hunt before?”

Arthur had been on several hunts, actually, but not a single one of the hunts he had ever been on had involved crouching down behind a large pile of hay, in the middle of a town, staring at someone’s _house._

He said as much.

Somehow, the boy with the golden eyes managed to shoot him a filthy look, even though Arthur couldn’t really tell where his eyebrows were.

“Okay, so it’s not a _hunt_ hunt, like a proper one with rabbits and snares and things, but it’s still a _hunt_ and we could still get caught if you don’t stop being such a _clotpole_.”

“What on _earth_ is a _clotpole_?”

“Y’know, it’s a pole that you throw mud clots at - look, it’s _Will’s_ word, alright? I’m just borrowing it cos he’s not here and you are and _somebody_ has to lead the hunt.”

Arthur closed his eyes and took in a deep breath through his nose. He had started to suspect, fairly early in their meeting that this boy was just a little bit of an idiot, and the longer he spent in his company, the more his suspicions were _confirmed._

“And what, _precisely_ , are we hunting for?” He asked, haughtily, frowning with all his might.

The golden eyed boy was not phased in the slightest, which was a new and distinctly unsettling experience for Arthur.

“That,” The boy said, pointing.

A woman appeared in the window of the cottage, holding a dish with a rag to protect her hands from the heat. She gently placed what she was holding on the windowsill, wiping sweat off her brow with one arm, and moved away. 

Arthur blinked. “It’s… a pie.”

“It’s a _tart_ ,” The golden eyed boy corrected, “Mrs. Linn’s winterberry tart if I’m looking right. And she’ll kill us if she sees us going for it, so _keep your voice down, would you?_ ”

Arthur blinked in polite confusion at his friend. Why, he wondered, were they trying to _steal_ something that the woman would have to give them if Arthur wanted it? All he had to do was tell his father that the woman had baked a pie, and that his friend wanted a slice, and the woman, were Uther in the giving sort of mood, would have to hand over her baked goods. He was just about to say as much, when he remembered that no, that wasn’t actually the case.

Here, in this moment, he was not Prince Arthur of Camelot. He was Wort, and Wort was not a prince, was not in any way connected to Uther, and if Wort wanted a pie, Wort would probably have to steal it.

Arthur ducked behind the hay pile.

 _“Finally_ ,” Said the golden eyed boy.

Arthur glared at him.

“Okay, Mrs. Linn just finished baking the tart, right?” The boy said, completely ignoring the daggers being sent his way, “So she’s going to leave it for about a quarter mark on her windowsill to cool. It’s gonna be all that she dares leave it out for when there’s tart bandits about, and even though _Will’s_ caught up at his dad’s forge all day shodding the Camelot horses, she knows that I’m staying low and inconspicuous and about _somewhere_ until those horses leave town so’s I don’t get my head lopped off.” The boy with the golden eyes squatted down in the dirt, picked up a nearby stick and began to draw something that looked to Arthur like a bunch of squiggly lines below a circle. “I’m hoping she thinks I’m not game to try stealing it by myself, ‘cos I wouldn’t be, but she doesn’t know that I’ve got _you_ now and that _could_ work in our favour.”

As he prattled, he drew a box next to the circle and squiggly lines (which Arthur realised was a _pie_ and he was looking at it upside down), and then a sort of semi-circle mound with lines coming off it and two crude stick figures drawn behind it. 

“We need some sort of distraction to get to our bounty,” The golden eyed boy said, still drawing what Arthur realised were supposed to be battle plans, “And I’m thinking _chickens._ ”

He outlined a plan that to Arthur sounded idiotic and ingenious and all-around brilliant, for all that it was harebrained and relied on everything going a little too right, and Arthur found himself smiling wider than he ever had in his life as he looked at the boy across from him.

“You’re _mad_.” He said, tone soft with awe.

“And just a little bit magic,” The boy agreed.

“This will _never_ work.”

The boy grinned, “But what if it _does_?” 

And, really, what did _Arthur_ have to lose, in this place where his anonymity was his sacred treasure, where the boy across from him smiled and laughed as magic sparked and danced in his eyes, everything beautiful that Arthur’s father had said it wasn’t. In this place where Arthur Pendragon of Camelot didn’t exist, and the brown-haired Wort filled his shoes just for a day, only a day, but oh, what a glorious day it could be.

“Okay,” He said, quiet and reverent and free.

“Okay?” For all his bravado, the golden eyed boy’s voice was almost as soft as Arthur’s; uncertain and hopeful, feckless and trembling.

“Okay.”

“ _Brilliant._ ”

Years later, if he ever was asked about that misadventure, Arthur wouldn’t remember much at all, only flashes; a latch being let loose from it’s hook, chickens escaping across a clodded and dirt-filled yard, linens pulled down from lines and thrown high onto the slit grain sacks that the hungry birds had descended upon, squawking and rioting, feathers flying, bird dust and grain husk spilling into the air and covering him and the mad boy next to him as they laughed and laughed and laughed, throwing hay into the air with abandon, and a woman who was heavy-set and on in her years chasing after them with a broom, her pie (although the golden eyed boy ended up being right and it was actually a _tart_ ) clutched fiercely in Arthur’s hand as they ran and ran and _ran_.

And if the golden eyed boy’s hand ended up in Arthur’s somewhere in their desperate flight, it was only because Arthur was _faster_ than him and had to pull him along to get him to _move_ , and his cheeks had felt fit to burst from how hard his grin was pulling at them, and the tart was warm in his other hand where the golden eyed boy’s red neck scarf was wrapped around it to protect Arthur’s fingers from the heat.

* * *

The ride is quiet and fraught with a hidden tension that Arthur doesn’t know how to dissipate. Every move forward feels like the thrumming of a string on a lute, calloused fingers plucking with little care, vibrations rocking through him in atonal discord that is tightening and tightening ever closer to the point where everything snaps and breaks and is lost forever.

Merlin has chosen to ride next to Gaius.

Arthur isn’t sure if the choice was entirely conscious on his manservant’s behalf, whether upon mounting up to ride Merlin had noticed his gradual shift down the line from next to Arthur to next to the old physician, as his head has been ducked in mulish silence ever since he left Arthur standing next to the horses, vambraced arm still half-raised in a gesture of… something.

The knights, too, are not strangers to the tension. The ride is more silent than any have ever been on, most unwilling to speak and break it in case it shatters like so much glass. Leon sends Arthur puzzled, reproachful looks, but the man will not impose on Arthur’s temper. He hasn’t since the day of Arthur’s proving, when Arthur stepped out from under the protection of his cloak and into the harsh scope of his father’s regard. The other knights are similarly quiet, although Arthur sees Bedeviere carve up an apple and absently offer a piece to Merlin, who doesn’t even notice it being passed back.

Arthur hates it.

He hates the seemingly insurmountable bridge that has sprung up between himself and his manservant since Ealdor, the rickety thing over a dark ravine, where one false step will prove his doom and he has no way of knowing which boards are sound before he steps, what can be said into the quiet air to begin the process of _fixing_ , or even if he wants it to be fixed. He misses, with a burning ache the shadow at his side, the drifting horse that Merlin never calls to task firmly enough, that he always gives a little too much head to, even when riding in file. He misses the flash of colour around a pale neck, the brown, ratty coat. He misses the veritable word-vomit pea soup prattle that never stops, only pauses for a minute or two after a barked “Shut up, Merlin,” that’s always a touch too fond.

And he doesn’t know how to reconcile all of that with _magic._

So the ride passes awkward and silent and grave, and by midday they see the crumbling ruin of their destination emerging from the shadows ahead of them, stones cast about like sleeping beasts, thrumming with quiet, pent-up energy that seems to reflect the disquiet of Arthur’s temper. Ahead of them, a broken wall juts out of the ground like a rib, just beyond it a half-collapsed tower reaches hopelessly for the sky. There’s not much here but an old ruin being taken back by nature one block at a time, and Arthur feels like he’s spent three awkward days chasing nothing but ghosts.

Still - 

He dismounts, and Merlin isn’t there dismounting beside him, and he stands for a moment as hands fail to take his reins and lead his horse away. After a beat, he ties his horse to a low-hanging branch, himself, and tries to ignore the subtle shiver of _wrong_ that crawls up his spine. 

“Fan out,” He calls to his knights, moving deeper into the ruins, stepping over and around the tree roots that grow with abandon, cracking straight through old stones, sprouting up from the dirt and tangle. The ruin would be pretty if it weren’t so eerie, light dappling through the canopy, everything green and white like emeralds and diamonds around a courtier’s neck. 

The knights move into the bones of the ancient structure, Gaius staying back near the horses, and Merlin hesitating near him for the barest of moments, before he gives a full-body shimmy and morosely begins to trudge towards Arthur, all the while resembling something like a kicked, half-grown dog. His head is down, ridiculous ears sticking out, slender neck bent, and as he approaches, Arthur clears his throat awkwardly and starts to say his name.

“Sire!” Leon’s call is sharp, further into the ruins.

Arthur winces, before turning to follow the call, Merlin trailing along like so much the ghost Arthur’s half-convinced they’re chasing. There’s a residual resistance in Merlin’s steps, like he would desperately rather be anywhere but trailing along after Arthur, and it snares and pulls at the back of Arthur’s mind, in that place that is always loosely aware of where Merlin stands when he’s nearby.

Leon, when they reach him, is standing in front of an intact building, small and squat and unremarkable, except for the fact that it contained a stairway leading down to the darkness below. The walls inside are lined with skulls and bones, all of which are human.

Arthur can’t quite catch the surprised noise that makes it out of his throat. “A catacombs.”

“If Gaius is right about the ghosts -” Merlin mutters under his breath behind him.

“What?”

“Nothing, Sire.” Still too cold and distant.

The knights have joined them at this point, and Arthur pulls an old, dusty torch from where it rests in a sconce in the doorway of the tombs. He strikes it with a flint, smiling faintly when the old pitch still manages to burn, even if it initially smokes a little and gives off the faint smell of scorched dust. Then, he steps into the building and begins down the stairs.

“Arthur,” Merlin warns.

Arthur ignores him, feeling Leon fall into step behind him, and one by one the other knights trickle forward as well.

Merlin hovers in the doorway for just a moment, seemingly torn with indecision, before he, too, steps into the dark.

The stairway is narrow, but short, leading downwards into a hallway that could only barely be called belowground, more cellar than tunnel. The air smells dry and dusty, and faintly of feathers, which snares and puzzles at Arthur for a minute until he decides that perhaps an owl is using the dry space to nest. He holds the torch in front of him as he walks, tries to ignore the open, empty grins of the skulls that line the walls.

“Why don’t we ever go anywhere nice?” Merlin complains at the back of the line, voice jittery with nerves.

Arthur tells himself he doesn’t smile.

 _Come now, Merlin. You’re a_ sorcerer _and you’re afraid of a few bones?_

It certainly doesn’t gel with the image of a sorcerer that Arthur has had since childhood, but then he’s slowly coming to realise that few things about Merlin do.

Up ahead of them, there’s a break in the rows of skulls, a blank patch of wall on the right hand side, that reveals itself to have writing on it as Arthur moves closer. He holds up the torch, inspecting the old, half-faded words written into the stone.

_Turn back, lest your gift be taken._

“That seems to be a bit threatening,” Merlin says, looking at the sign, “Perhaps we should do what it says?”

Arthur doesn’t spare him a glance as he continues down the hall, deeper into the catacombs, the knights behind him falling into a line with Merlin reluctantly taking up the rear.

“I’m serious,” Says the manservant, “I’m pretty sure that people wouldn’t put a warning like that up on a wall unless it meant something. Maybe we should all head back for the surface and poke around a bit more, try to work out what it means before we go haring into danger.”

“Merlin?” Arthur calls, from the front of the line,

“Let me guess, shut up?”

“And they say you’re not _smart._ ”

There’s an offended snort from the back of the line, and Arthur allows himself a small smile, a comfortable feeling of _normalcy_ as he pulls ahead, further down the path. The tension simmering in the air loosens, just the tiniest of fractions.

“It could be dangerous, though,” Merlin calls.

Arthur impatiently drawls his name.

“Fine, I’m coming.”

The small smile on Arthur’s face has no right to be there, but this is so familiar, so painfully what the world should be, simple and easy. Merlin complaining about danger with fear catching in his throat, but trailing along anyway, Arthur bullying him into silence when he has to; just to get the job done. 

They reach a threshold at the end of the corridor, a large, open space beyond it. Arthur frowns, passing his torch through the doorway and raising it high to get a look at the room beyond.

In one corner, the roof has collapsed, allowing natural light to spill through on broken masonry and tree roots, and allowing Arthur to draw out the dimensions of the space. It’s not overly large, but still large enough, about twenty paces long and ten across, with pillars supporting the wall every four feet or so down its length. Across the hall is a second threshold that is more of an arch - large enough for two horses to pass through abreast and sweeping almost to the roof of the chamber. Arthur can’t see anything in the room beyond, so he crosses into it, holding his torch high and feeling his knights trail in behind him.

And that is when everything goes horribly, cataclysmically _south._

As Merlin crosses the threshold of the doorway, there is a moment where the world dips, goes still, then seems to shudder in quiet expectation. There is no wind, no sound, even Arthur’s torch stops flickering for half a second, where he holds it high. Then, the ground rocks once, on its axis, and light flashes up from the threshold, snaring around Merlin in thick, ropy strands, white-blue and blinding, there for the barest of moments, before shuttering out, leaving nothing but a searing afterimage on Arthur’s eyes.

There’s a beat, where the knights collectively catch a breath and Arthur’s heart leaps firmly to his throat.

Another, where the world seems, for just a moment, to be _waiting._

“Oh,” Says Merlin, quiet and small, before he crumples like washing falling from a line.

* * *

The boys were sitting back in the apple tree where all had started, Arthur chewing on a mouthful of berry tart, the boy with the golden eyes leaning back in the crook of the branch, resting against the tree trunk and watching a bird just beyond the field circling in the sky.

“D’you think my Ma and your Da could get married?”

Arthur choked on his tart. 

He had an image, for a moment, of the King of Camelot placing a crown on a woman with his friend’s sticky-outy ears, her face just as mercurial as his own, her eyes just the same shade of golden. Then, of his friend, thrown to the fire the next day.

“I don’t think so,” He said, quietly.

His friend sighed, “Yeah,” He said, “I don’t think so, either. For a while I thought that my Ma would get married to Will’s Da, you know, after Will’s ma died. It seemed like a good solution, given he didn’t have a ma and I didn’t have a da and he and I were such good friends, but when I told Ma about it she got all sad for a bit and said that things don’t work that way.”

“You really do talk an awful lot.”

The boy shrugged, “Makes it easier,” He said, “If you talk a lot, people don’t listen. It’s only when you’re quiet and then you say something that people start to pay attention.”

“To the fact you can fall out of a tree and not crack your crown?”

The boy snorted, “Something like that.” 

He leaned back on his branch as Arthur helped himself to a third piece of tart.

“It would have been nice,” The boy said, after awhile, “To have not been a bastard.”

Arthur didn’t really know what to say to that. 

He thought, for a moment, about how much kinder his father had been to him when he had brown hair, instead of blonde, of the fact that the love in his father’s eyes had been less marred with pain and guilt.

“My father doesn’t talk about my mother,” He said quietly, the confection in his fingers suddenly less appealing than it had been moments ago. This wasn’t something that he had ever really spoken about before, not to anyone, but somehow he thought that the boy with the golden eyes would understand, that he wouldn’t judge the quiet secrets Arthur kept close to his chest, “He hates the fact that I look like her.”

“My Ma doesn’t talk about my Da, either,” the boy shrugged, “I think he’s still alive, she’s never said that he’s dead, but she acts, sometimes, like one day he’ll walk over the hill and come home.” He slid down the branch towards Arthur, “Give us a piece of that tart, yeah?”

Arthur did, mutely.

The boy settled back to his first spot, “My Da’s never coming home, and my Ma says that’s alright, that we’re fine just her and me and it’s better if he stays away, but it still hurts sometimes cos everyone else has got _both_.”

It was the fourth or fifth time of the day that the boy had managed to do that, Arthur realised, that he’d managed to leave Arthur wordless because he’d said out loud the guarded secrets in Arthur’s heart, careless and clever, and cutting right to the soul. How it _hurt_ , watching other boys seated on their mother’s laps, having their hair smoothed gently away from their brows even as they squirmed to get away, to show that they were strong and proud. How his father’s distant, affectionate smiles were both cold and caring because they lacked… _something_ … made Arthur resentful, even as it made him try harder to win the precious treasure that was his father’s pride. How he’d always been met with Gaius’ kindness when he’d scraped, or bruised, or hurt, but always as well with a clinical detachment when others had been softly soothed for all their care was less experienced. 

Arthur licked his fingers as some berry juice dripped down them. “Do you love your father?” He asked, then immediately wished he hadn’t spoken. He felt it coming immediately, the taunts about being a _girl_ , about having stupid _emotions_ , that would fall from the lips of his new friend as his friend sprung down from the tree and would never speak to Arthur again because here Arthur wasn’t the prince and his new friend didn’t have to humour him because of who Arthur’s father was.

But the boy didn’t do that, he merely shrugged. “I don’t know him,” He said, “I don’t think I can love someone who I don’t know.”

Arthur sighed, “Yeah,” He agreed, rather pointlessly, thinking about how his birthday was always marred with the same soft litany of how much _Ygraine_ had loved _him_ , and the guilt he’d always felt as her son because he’d never known her, never had her as more than a name from someone else’s lips in hushed corridors before his father had descended for the feast. He thought he loved his mother, but he couldn’t be sure. “Yeah,” He said again, to fill the growing silence.

“Sometimes I worry that I hate him for leaving.” The boy with the golden eyes said, after the silence had stretched on far too long.

“Yeah,” Arthur quietly returned.

* * *

“What _are_ you doing, Merlin?”

“Er,” Merlin said, from his hands and knees, just outside the door to the kitchen stores, “Looking for ants?” 

“Ants.” The disbelief in Arthur’s voice was it’s own texture, thickening the air between himself and his manservant.

Merlin’s smile was tight and hopeful as he got to his feet. “Spring,” He said, gesturing around him, “It’s the season for them.”

“Quite.”

“Don’t want them in the food, do we, Sire?”

“I’m sure we don’t.”

The awkward pause between them grew as Merlin’s smile turned from pained optimism to a slightly fixed grimace. 

“Out of curiosity,” drawled Arthur, folding his arms over his chest and sinking his weight to one foot, “What are the crystal and plumb line for?”

Merlin looked at the objects in his hands like he’d just remembered they were there.

“Oh,” He said, “It’s compressed sugar.” He shifted a bit on his feet, “Y’know, because ants like sweet things?”

“I… see.”

“I had to heat it a bit so it’d not fall apart,” Merlin continued, “If I dropped it, that is.” He gave the crystal a little jiggle, and it bounced on its plumb. “S’why it’s brown in bits - it got too close to the fire.”

“Of course.”

Merlin shifted his hands so he was holding them around the crystal instead of on the string. He gave a weak sort of shrug.

“Have you found any?” Arthur asked.

“Any what?”

“Ants, Merlin.”

“Oh! Right, any ants, of course. I mean, not yet, but probably soon -” Merlin’s eyes went wide, suddenly tracking something over Arthur’s shoulder; and then he was fidgeting from foot to foot, hand shaking where it was now holding the crystal tightly, like he was struggling almost to keep it in place. “Look, I’ve - I’ve got to go look for the - for _ants_ somewhere else,” Merlin said, “If I could just…” He shrugged forward suggestively.

Arthur raised his eyebrows, but stepped to the side. 

“Right,” Said Merlin, “Thanks for that.” And he ducked away and around the corner without quite running, but it was a near thing.

Arthur heard a stumble, a shriek and Merlin’s pained cry of “Sorry!” as the footsteps retreated out of Arthur’s range of hearing.

“I’m not getting involved,” He said to the empty corridor.

There was the faint sound of crashing in the distance. Arthur closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose where a headache was beginning to form.

“I’m _not_ getting involved.”

There was another, fainter crash, and a muffled curse.

He made the conscious choice, at that point, to walk towards his chambers, which were conveniently located in the opposite direction to his siege-ram of a manservant.

* * *

Merlin is sprawled, pale and small, on a bedroll in the middle of the camp when Arthur and Leon return from their cursory exploration of the catacombs. Gaius, old and arthritic, has levered himself into a kneeling position next to Arthur’s manservant that Arthur half-fears he won’t be able to get up from without help.

“How is he?” Asks Leon, and Arthur says nothing, folds his hands over his chest in grim expectation. 

“It is difficult to say,” Gaius says, even as he brushes a cool cloth across Merlin’s face. Arthur thinks he looks old; old and impossibly weary, “For all intents and purposes, he appears to be merely sleeping - but not even a sharp pain is enough to wake him.”

“He’s having a nap, of course he is,” Arthur tries for his normal tone and misses, “Just another day in his lazy life, then.”

Gaius would never be as blatant to express straightforward reproach to the crown prince. Somehow, he manages subtle tones of it when he replies, “This is no ordinary nap, Sire.”

Arthur makes a tight noise in his throat.

Merlin sprawls between himself and Gaius like an accusation, small, shallow breaths act as arrows that chip slowly away at the links between Arthur’s armour. He should not be worried for Merlin’s fate, _he should not be worried._

He is.

“So he sleeps it off,” He says to Gaius, “We leave, we tie him to a horse if we have to, and return him to a bed in Camelot until such a time as he wakes up.” 

“I fear it will not be that simple,” Says Gaius, “For a few days, sleep is maintainable by the body, but for extended periods - ” He hesitates.

Arthur frowns and waits, a trick the old man taught him.

Gaius gives an almost pained sigh, face pinching when he looks down at his young apprentice, “The body cannot sustain itself at rest forever, Sire. Eventually he will waste and atrophy if he cannot be awoken.”

Arthur ignores Leon’s sharp, indrawn breath. “How long?”

“If we can get him to take water without choking, or broth - ”

“How _long_ , Gaius?”

“With no change, two weeks,” The healer says, sounding pained. “Longer, if we can feed him. If we cannot find and destroy what is causing the enchantment soon, however, even if we can get him to wake eventually, his muscles will begin to diminish and might never be the same.”

Muscles and Merlin sounds like an oxymoron, but he doesn’t say as much. Instead, he nods grimly and turns to Leon, “Ready the knights,” he says, “We’ll do another sweep of the lower tomb before dusk.”

Leon nods, moves away. Arthur crouches down, staring at his servant and trying to reconcile saving a warlock with saving his friend. 

“Do you have an idea as to why the enchantment is affecting Merlin and not any of the knights who walked through the doorway before him?” He asks Gaius, as the man straightens the blankets on top of his apprentice.

Gaius flinches ever so slightly, a bunching of muscles at his shoulders that Arthur wouldn’t have seen if he hadn’t been looking for it, and is a confirmation of what he already expected.

_He knows._

Arthur finds it no coincidence that the knights managed to pass through the doorway with no ill effect, but that Merlin couldn’t take more than a step before collapsing, not in light of recent revelations. He watches Gaius’ hand clasping on Merlin’s blankets, tightening almost defensively, and wonders what an old man would do against the first knight of Camelot, to protect the man who had become his son. He also knows Gaius can’t help but be biased in the position he is in, but also that Gaius’ judgement in matters of magic has more than once proven more sound than his father’s. Gaius trusts Merlin enough to hide him, and to debate with himself about standing against the crown.

“Is there a reason?” Arthur prompts.

“I honestly couldn’t say, Sire. I apologise.” The lie is smooth, and barely even a lie. It’s only distinguishable from the truth as a matter of technicality - a couldn’t instead of a won’t. Still, Gaius has been a stalwart supporter of the crown since long before Arthur was even a thought, and Arthur _knows_ he can trust Gaius’ judgement.

Arthur’s lips tug into a frown, and he makes a decision.

He speaks calmly, affecting nonchalance, knowing that he will betray his father in this next breath in a startling discovery of _Merlin_ and _worth_ that he had never known before. “You misunderstand, I ask not because I wish to know.”

Gaius looks up at Arthur, and this time the reproach is there in his eyes, if not in his words, “I’m not sure I comprehend your meaning.”

Arthur feels the pull of his heart, feels the childish fear of disobedience that Uther had instilled in him at such a young age. “Gaius,” He says, takes a breath as his words catch in his throat, then forces them out anyway. “Do I need plausible deniability?”

Gaius chokes, “Sire?” He pales, face almost going as white as his hair, “Are you saying -”

Arthur closes his eyes, one hand held up in a silent order to stop, the other wiping over his face in a long sweep. Gaius’ sharp eyes pierce even this small defense, and Arthur feels small and sheltered once more, a boy beneath the physician’s stare. Mercifully, Gaius falls silent before he says anything incriminating.

“If I were to know the reason why the doorway affected Merlin,” Arthur says, delicately, “Would it compromise my relationship with my father?”

It’s the wording that does it, he knows, a subtle declaration of which side of the battlefield Arthur would fall for. When the prince opens his eyes, Gaius’ face has regained some of it’s pallor, even as his eyes have become sad and old. “It would, Sire,” He admits, the words falling from his lips like a betrayal. King or child or both, Arthur doesn’t know.

Arthur pulls air sharply through his teeth. “Then it would be best if you didn’t tell me.”

Gaius’ lips quirk in the faintest smile, “Of course.”

“It would also be best if Merlin were not to know that we have had this conversation,” Arthur says, guilt snaring in his chest, but conviction in his words, “He is hopeless at keeping secrets he feels don’t need to be kept.”

Which was most, Arthur had found, and Merlin was one of the most honest liars he’d ever met.

But then, the threat of death was always a powerful motivator.

Arthur watches the threads of reasoning weave together in Gaius’ mind - Merlin’s reckless disregard for his own safety, the relief he would feel at being unburdened of this betrayal, his siege-hammer subtlety and single-mindedness, his understanding for (but complete disregard of) the finer mechanics of politics and wars-of-words. He watches the man reach the same grudging conclusions that Arthur already has.

For Merlin’s safety, Arthur _can’t_ know that Merlin has magic. The fact that he does is neither here nor there. Perhaps, one day, this will change. Either Merlin will harden to match the callous nature of the world, or Arthur will soften the world to accept him, but as it stands Merlin’s heart is his doom. And Arthur is talking to the one person in Camelot who knows this perhaps better than he does.

“What conversation, Sire?” Gaius asks, casting his hand for Merlin’s defense, even from himself.

Arthur’s answering smile is grim when he takes his leave.

* * *

Death is always sudden, Arthur knows, something like a flame snuffed by a wind. It comes and strikes before anyone notices, is gone before the wailing starts. Death cares little how much time you have to prepare, because it knows you have been preparing your whole life for it’s welcoming call, it’s final, gentle kiss. And it doesn’t matter how sudden or drawn out the wait for death is, the moment between the inhale and stop is always a dark, desperate surprise. 

Arthur’s life has always been death, from the moment he was born, to the moment he dies, he will always have an awareness of death as a sudden friend, who visits and leaves without warning. Arthur has always been surrounded by the pyre, the hangman’s noose, the headsman’s axe, the sword, the shield, the mace. At fourteen he was no less used to it than he would be when somewhere, some _when_ , it would finally catch up to him. Arthur already had an understanding that we are all on borrowed time long before his fourteenth year.

Still -

It had been such a stupid, small, _tiny_ thing that caught the falconer in the end.

He had been careful, for the better part of a year, Arthur would realise years later, so careful about his body and hiding in plain sight that it irritated Arthur a little with how easy it had been for the man to meet his downfall.

All of that, of bathing separately, of never taking lovers, of always being dressed and ready before the dawn, and it had been a hunting trip, a snake and a fall from a rearing horse that had put a perfectly placed slash in the mans’ breeches, bearing his triskelion tattoo for all the world to see.

Or, for Uther to see, moments before Arthur had managed to get to the man on the ground to help him up, not even noticing, at first, the tear in his breeches that had damned him.

“Are you al -”

“Arthur, don’t touch him.” The command, sharp and furious in his father’s voice had made Arthur freeze as he would have were he years younger. Arthur had turned, slowly, confused, and had seen Uther’s face, purple with apoplectic _rage._ Arthur’s hand had hovered in the air, as his father coldly, furiously dismounted, every movement a perfectly controlled storm that Arthur’s inner child quailed at. 

The falconer’s bird had swooped down, and Arthur, hardly thinking, stuck out his arm for it to land on. 

Years later, two images would stand out to him from this memory more than anything else - Uther a tower of ice in the snowy landscape, rage and control and something almost accusatory in the “Galahad,” He sent at the man in the snow,

And the falconer in the snow looking up at Uther, still as a river and calm, resigned when he replied, “Uther,” Right before the king’s crossbow bolt buried itself in his chest.

Death is a brutal thing, sudden and swift, and Arthur felt very little as he buried his fingers into the soft plumage of the bird on his arm.

However, it was still a surprise when Uther turned to him, righteous and angry, and had said with very quiet, clear authority, “Hand me the bird, Arthur.”

Arthur would remember, later, the disconnect that shot through his head at that, even as he went perfectly still, falcon preening itself on his arm. “Father?” His voice had been cold and detached, his emotions fleeing deep into himself as his father took a step towards him. Arthur did not step back. “Why did you-”

It was only then that Arthur saw the tattoo, only then he understood his father’s sudden fury.

“Galahad was a druid.”

“The _bird_!” Uther snapped, hard, hot and angry, almost a crack, before he drew himself back under full, rigid control, and said, softer, calmer, “Pass it to me.”

The tiniest press of fear cracked through the cold shell Arthur had wrapped himself in. “Father, surely -”

“I will not ask again.”

“It has done noth-”

“I will _not_ have my kingdom _so polluted!_ ”

Only Arthur’s training left him standing in the wake of Uther’s anger. “Even if the man _were_ a druid, his bird cannot -”

Uther’s hand shot out, quick as a snake, snaring the bird around its neck. It made a horrid, choked off sound, talons and wings flapping in indignation, one razor-sharp claw catching on Uther’s tunic and cutting it with the sound of tearing fabric.

And then Uther’s other hand came up, and with the skill of a servant wringing a chicken, and the sound of snapping bone, Uther broke the creature’s lovely neck.

It fell limp and dead in a second in his hands, and he dropped it to the snow, where it lay as cold as it’s master.

“Father -” Arthur said, not sure how he would continue, or if he could at all.

“You will be _silent_ , so help me Arthur, that _man_ has had enough influence on you already.”

And Uther turned, and stalked away, leaving Arthur with the horses, and the corpses, and his friend death slipping away like a ghost.

* * *

“I heard,” Morgana drawled from where she stood in the doorway of his chambers, “That Lord Ulfred withdrew his son from knights training the other day.”

“Did you now?” Arthur didn’t look up from the letter he was writing. 

Morgana hummed confirmation as she slipped further into his chambers without his invitation, Guinevere following along behind her like a duckling of a chaperone. “I heard it mentioned at court that the training has proven too difficult for his son to keep up with, and moving into Summer as we are there were fears mentioned for the boy’s health in the heat.”

“Such a shame that some constitutions can’t handle the weather,” Arthur agreed noncommittally as he crossed out one turn of phrase and tried another.

“Uther is furious.” Morgana sounded delighted.

“I’m sure he is.”

Morgana made her way over to Arthur’s desk, gingerly settling on the corner of it, looking at him over her shoulder with her arms folded across her chest. “I’m sure this has nothing to do with Merlin mentioning to you the way that Romayne treated the chambermaids when he thought no-one was watching.”

“Did he? I can’t remember that he did.”

Arthur crossed out ‘Dear Sir,’, tried ‘To My Most Honoured Friend,’, frowned at it.

“How should I address this to Lord Merront?”

“Oh, ‘To a Good and Noble Viper.’” Morgana said lightly.

Arthur scowled and crossed out where he was halfway through writing ‘good and noble’.

He didn’t look up, but Morgana’s voice contained a smile when she started speaking again, “You know, when I think on it, I’m sure Merlin mentioned Romayne’s behaviour to you,” She said, “One day, just after training. He had that look on his face like he’d swallowed a lemon, and when you asked him he didn’t want to admit what was wrong until you all but forced him. It was about a fortnight ago, if I remember correctly.”

“Even if Merlin _did_ mention it,” Arthur returned, “I’m sure that Romayne’s treatment of any servants wouldn’t be enough to exclude him from the knighthood,” 

Arthur tried ‘My Lord Merront,’ as the salutation for his letter. Still lacking something, he was sure, but less a lie than anything else he’d tried so far.

“Which I’m also sure is why he wasn’t _excluded_ ,” Morgana parried, “Especially after Uther’s explicit orders that his behaviour was to be ignored in favour of establishing stronger ties with the younger nobility.”

Arthur grunted in a non-committal manner.

“It is _strange_ , though, that as the weather turned hotter he seemed to have those sickness spells and headaches - only in the morning, and only really on the days when knight training was to occur. You’d think that such an illness would be more likely to affect him in the afternoons when it was hotter, after training were already complete.”

“Indeed.”

“And it is especially strange that somehow on the evenings before, _Merlin_ was always the one to serve him his wine.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting that my manservant was poisoning him.”

“Oh, no,” Morgana said, “Nothing like that. But it is _almost_ like Merlin forgot to water Romayne’s wine, and then may have forgotten to stop serving him when he should.”

Arthur tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t quite stop his lip from twitching into a smile. “It almost is,” He said, “But that’s something that I would never endorse, even if Merlin had, perhaps, suggested the idea to me.”

Morgana’s eyes, when Arthur met them, were light and storm green, amused and fond and proud of him in a way they seldom were, “I would never think you would,” She said, “But I still, somehow, find myself saying that disobedience suits you, Arthur. You should revel in it more often.”

“And here you were, only the other week, telling me to stop engaging in power struggles with my father.”

“Only the unnecessary ones, Arthur,” Morgana rejoined, “You might be a better man than him, but you’re still _immensely_ petty.”

Arthur threw his quill at her.

Morgana smirked, bright as bells, picking the quill up from the floor and tucking it back onto his desk. “Where is Merlin, anyway?” She asked, seeming to only just have noticed his absence.

“I sent him to watch over Romayne while he packs,” Arthur told her, folding the letter he was writing and putting it aside to complete later, “He’s to make triply sure that the bastard actually _leaves._ ”

Morgana’s pure laugh filled his chambers and warmed his heart in equal measure.

* * *

The chamber, when the knights return to it, just before dusk on their second day at the ruins, is a lot darker than it had been in any of their previous sweeps. The sun has fallen too low in the sky for light to seep in through the half-collapsed roof, and the last stains of purple streak the sky where they can see it through the darkening canopy above them. Each of his men has a torch, fresh and not left in the ruin for years, and they fan out across the room, searching for anything that could be a clue to why Merlin sleeps and sleeps and doesn’t wake.

Arthur knows, of course, and is looking for illusive deniability because for all he trusts his men with his life, Merlin’s is another matter entirely.

In the fading light, the tomb is eerie, and there’s a prickle on the back of Arthur’s neck that twinges the hair there. Cautiously, he pulls his sword from its sheath so very slowly.

“Sire,” Says Bedevire, somewhere to his left.

“I know.”

There’s a glint in the darkness, the faintest stutter of movement, and he turns towards it, lifting his torch high above his head.

In the shadow, beady eyes stare back.

Arthur takes a very slow, very measured breath, settling his feet and readying his sword. 

The eyes tilt, regarding him with careful consideration, and whatever the creature is, it slides forward from the wall of the room, serpentine and birdlike both as it slips into the light.

Cold bird eyes stare at him over a wickedly sharp beak, bright red cockles dangling below it, and sliding up to wrap behind it’s eyes as it regards him. It is huge, larger than a horse, and as it slinks out of the shadows Arthur notices that it has poorly developed wings, and feathers of white, orange and blue that wrap around the upper half of its body. It resembles a rooster, curiously elongated like a serpent, and this second allusion continues as behind it’s jagged, birdlike feet, a snake tail whips out behind it. On one level, it looks positively ridiculous, this strange mixture of fowl and reptile, but some part of Arthur remembers, when he looks at it, the time he was near the chicken coop, and a mouse had run across it and had been massacred en masse before it made it halfway across.

He meets the creature’s cold, beady stare.

“Softly, Bedevire, get the others.”

His voice is pitched low and designed to carry, and he doesn’t check if the other knight deigns to follow the instruction as he brings his sword around in front of himself. Blue lights whip up from the ground, winding around the creature’s legs like rope, and it makes a soft huffing noise in the back of it’s throat like a chicken’s cluck without the sound.

Somewhere, one of the knights knocks something and it clatters to the ground.

With a screech like a scream, the beast launches itself from behind a toppled pillar, and Arthur has a chance, just one, to focus on blindingly blue feathers, scales black as midnight, and wicked claws the colour of bronze in firelight, before it is upon him. He brings his torch up in front of his face as it pecks at him, diving out of the way as it makes the screaming noise again, something shattering against his eardrums and driving him almost dizzy. 

It’s all Arthur can do to bring his sword up in front of him and slash as the creature dives towards him, his arms feel like lead and the reverberations from the scream are still rattling around the chamber. The beast darts out of the way and hunches back, flares out its stumpy wings like a fan behind it and hisses at Arthur. It’s _fast_ , so fast, and it’s all Arthur can do to go on the defensive as it rears and bolts in at him again.

He rolls to dodge a bloodied beak that pecks at where he was standing, then leaps backwards to avoid a kick from a taloned foot. The beast spins on the spot, serpentine tail swinging around and crashing into Arthur, sending him across the room where he strikes the wall and falls, side a burning line of pain.

He does a quick inventory as the pain fades into the background - he didn’t hit his head, and the pain, although it was sudden, is fading into background noise. He’ll have a bruise but no worse. He drags his sword up again and glares at the beast that is stalking towards him, crest raised high.

“I will - _not -”_ he says, _“_ Be killed - by a _chicken!_ ”

The creature lets off another scream, this one shakes through his head and sends him, gasping, to his knees. It feels like every drop of energy is trying to fly from his body towards the beast, and not just _his_ , he realises.

When the creature shrieks, ropes of energy shoot up from the ground into it, binding it in a second and then fading with the same after image that appeared when Merlin fell at the door. With each cry, the beast moves a little faster, its movements become a little more focused and intent.

The Camelot knights stand in a ring around the beast, moving into position as Arthur uses his sword as a crutch to struggle up to his feet. They all look a little green around the gills, swords drooping at their tips as they face the beast, dropping a little more with each of the continual shrieks it gives.

Arthur raises his sword and lurches forward, shouting a battle cry that his knights echo. They duck in at the beast, slashing at its hide, but it thrashes its tail again and knocks half of the men easily to the side. It lashes out, lighting quick, at Leon’s head and the man only just manages to duck away to avoid losing it. Bedeviere strikes at one of the creature’s great legs and draws a long, bloody slash down it, before it flings out one of its wings and Bedeviere is tossed across the room like a ragdoll. He hits one of the columns and doesn’t get up, but Arthur doesn’t let himself think on it right now.

The beast launches itself at the prince once more, and this time it manages to leap on him and knock him down like he’s a reed. It presses him to the ground under one of it’s claws, and its head rears back on it’s snakelike neck, eyeing him with a beady, quizzical, hungry stare.

_No!_

There’s a flash of light that ripples over the creature’s body and the monster leaps into the air like a fish on a line, serpentlike body writhing and snapping in the air before it falls backwards to the ground off Arthur. 

It is back on its feet in an instant, but the feathers along the top half of its body are puffed out now, uncertain, even as it watches Arthur with hungry eyes. He picks up his sword and resets it along his arm, has half a moment to wonder about where his torch went to, before the creature leaps at him again.

Arthur dodges, his legs feel a little stronger underneath him, and the other knights around him attack the beast as he gets out of the way. As they do, it leaps up and over them, out of their circle, wraps around to the other side of a pillar and whips its body up, neck extended, feathers puffed, wings spread wide. It shrieks again at them, flashes blue, and it’s like the exhaustion that comes after the siege thrown at Arthur all at once. 

_Give it_ back _!_

The creature shrieks, but this time like it is in pain, and a long ripple runs over it and sets it thrashing and writing. Energy seems to come back to Arthur in a game of tug-o-war, flooding into him warm and ready, and his sword-arm feels strong again as he holds it up.

Leon darts in at the creature from the side, and his sword strikes true, drawing a deep, bloody gash up the thing’s belly and this time the howl it gives is definitely pain as it flails and kicks the knight away. Arthur tries to dart into its other side, but has to leap out of the way as the creature brings down it’s head and pecks at him again, trying to snap off the arm that holds his sword. 

_I won’t let you hurt him!_

The blue light comes again and wraps itself around the beast, and it _writhes_ , tail slamming into the pillars around it, blood-curdling screams tearing from its throat. Arthur leaps at it, brings his sword down upon its neck and manages, somehow, through the feathers to strike true. Blood pours from the slash he has made and the creature’s cries die into a death gurgle as it flails weakly on the ground. Blue light explodes out of it in mighty ropes, layers upon layers falling from its body to soak up into the ground, and then it is still, and dead, and gone.

 _Hah! Take that you_ stupid _chicken! Try to take_ my _magic, why don’t you? Pecked off more than you could_ chew!

Arthur blinks, because there’s no way, there can’t possibly be a way, but - 

He thinks back on the battle, on the way that it shifted and pulled, and how at every point of change there had seemed to be a voice in the dark, something fighting alongside him, helping him prevail. How the beast had responded to the calls with pain, like energy was being stolen from it, snatched back by a voice and forced back to where it was supposed to go.

That voice had almost sounded like _Merlin_. 

* * *

Arthur followed the golden eyed boy down to the creek that bordered the woods, later, watching as the boy took their pie dish and started swilling it about in the water.

“What are you doing?”

“Washing it.”

Arthur sat down on the large, flat rock that the boy was crouched on, fascinated by the boy’s long fingers as they rubbed flakes of pastry crust out of the clay crevices of the baking dish. 

“Why? Why not just give it back like that?”

“Mrs Linn’s gonna kill me either way, but she’ll kill me less if the pie dish comes back clean.”

“Why are you so convinced people are going to kill you?”

The boy shrugged, unusually taciturn, and Arthur wondered if he may have said something wrong.

He fell into an uneasy silence with the boy, watching him as the pie dish became cleaner and cleaner under his ministrations, watching as he kept cleaning even after there were no crumbs left to clean.

“Can I ask -”

“Have you ever -”

Both boys froze, looking at each other, then they both grinned.

“Can I ask,” Arthur said again at the minute, “Why you think everyone’s going to kill you?”

“Healthy paranoia,” The boy quipped. Arthur stared at him in confusion. “Look, if everyone’s always out to get you, it only makes sense to prepare for the worst.”

Neither of them questioned why two children under ten would know what the word paranoia meant, and it spoke of both of their upbringings that they did.

“Why is everyone out to get you?”

The boy reached one hand out of the water and waggled his fingers. “Why do you think?”

He went back to furiously scrubbing the too-clean pie dish.

“But it’s not your fault,” Arthur said, in a small voice, “You didn’t choose it.”

The boy let out a bitter, derisive snort. “You think that matters to the Camelot king or his son?” He asked, “If they knew that there was someone with magic in Ealdor, they’d kill everyone here, never mind that we haven’t even _done_ anything but exist. The king in Essetir is even _worse_ , he’d take me away from my mum if he knew, throw me in his army, hurl me at his enemies ‘til I broke. He’d probably take every last man from the village he could, too, press them into his army, because having them here would be wasteful. Then, when the harvest failed the next year, because _of course it would_ , all the women, children and old folks he left behind would die a slow death, rather than a quick one.”

The boy said all this with a frighteningly cold certainty, just a statement of fact, and it left something trembling, hot and furious and scared at the base of Arthur’s spine.

“Not everyone’s out to kill me,” Said the boy with the golden eyes, “But there are _enough_.”

Arthur reached out and gently took the pie dish from his hands, placing it far up on the rock where it wouldn’t get smashed.

Then, he pushed the boy into the water.

The boy gave an undignified, squawking yelp as he splashed into the river and came up spluttering, glaring at Arthur with hot fury in his eyes His hair was plastered down to his forehead, dripping rivulets of water over his skin, his clothing was drenched through, and he looked so painfully, comically shocked, that Arthur couldn’t help himself.

He laughed.

The boy in the water spluttered as Arthur doubled over, giggles spilling out of him with abandon, arms coming to wrap around his sides tightly, smile almost fit to break his face in two. The boy let out a pained, angry yelp, reaching out, wet hand slapping around Arthur’s ankle.

Then Arthur felt the tiniest _push_ behind him, like a friend’s warm hand on his back, even as the boy tugged firmly on his leg, and Arthur ended up in the water as well. They tousled for awhile, taking it in turns pushing and shoving, and every so often that warm feeling came again to Arthur, tugging him under the water or letting him go, or gently forcing him away from the golden eyed boy, and it’s not until they’ve both hauled themselves up, exhausted, to dry off in the warm spring sun that Arthur realises what it was.

“You _cheated_!” He gasped

He still can’t see his friend’s face clearly, but knows that the grin he can half-make-out is entirely fond cheek.

“I did nothing of the sort.”

“You used your… your _magic_!”

“You never said I _couldn’t_.”

Arthur stared at him, horribly offended, and the golden eyed boy laughed and laughed and laughed.

Arthur should have been afraid, he knew, should have been worried that this strange boy had used magic on him, but he couldn’t. Not with how warm it had felt on his back, on how he had known somewhere deep in him that it wouldn’t hurt him, even when it was holding him under the water. He knew that it was _play_ , that the boy would let go like one of his friends at Camelot wouldn’t, that while Arthur would have to fight and tousle and prove his strength to the other noble boys, this one here on the rock next to him had a gentler turn to his nature, one that didn’t like to bully or harm. 

The golden eyed boy’s magic was as much him as the rest - it wouldn’t like to bully or harm either.

So Arthur flopped back onto the rock, listening to his friend laugh and grumbling for the sake of it, even when he was really quite pleased. Eventually they lapsed into silence between them, and it was still even longer before the golden eyed boy sat up and looked at the river.

“Will kissed Meena here, the other day.” He said, quietly.

Arthur looked up at him and said nothing.

“We were all of us here, it was hot,” Said the boy, “And Will and Meena were in the river splashing about a bit. Jack was on the shore on the other side, trying to make a fishing line even though Beth told him that using cooking twine and a bit of cake for bait wouldn’t work when he didn’t have a hook. Mary found a frog, and she was trying to get Naim to kiss it so’s it’d turn into a princess.”

There was something like _confession_ and _desperation_ in the golden eyed boy’s voice, and he was very deliberately looking away from Arthur.

“Naim said that maybe Meena should kiss Will cos he was frog enough to turn into a prince if she did, and then we could make our own kingdom. And Meena was arguing with him about it, saying she didn’t want to kiss no _boy_ , even if it would make a prince, and that maybe Naim should mind his own business and Will grabbed her all quick like and kissed her.”

The boy sighed, brought his legs up to his chest and folded his arms around them. “Will put frogspawn in her hair right after and she started shrieking.”

Arthur sat up and moved so that he was sitting next to the golden eyed boy, absently picking up some gravel from their rock and throwing it into the river where it rattled like rain for a moment. 

“It was all done so quick and forgot right after. Stupid games and the like. Meena screaming and trying to get frog eggs out of her hair, and Jack not catching a fish though he tried all afternoon. And everyone acted like it didn’t matter.”

“But it did.”

The golden eyed boy made a noise in the back of his throat. “I wanted Will to kiss _me_.”

Arthur rested his head on the boy’s shoulder, feeling the warm press of skin underneath his cheek.

“I don't - that’s _weird_ , isn’t it? To want a boy to kiss you?” The boy sounded desperately like he wanted Arthur to say it wasn’t.

“I’d kiss you,” Arthur said instead, low and quiet.

The boy looked at him, then, startled, and Arthur didn't think. He just ducked in, quick and before he could change his mind, pressed his lips to the other boy’s for the barest of seconds. The boy made a startled sound in the back of his throat as Arthur pulled away.

Arthur licked his lips, curiously, where they tingled slightly.

His mouth tasted odd, and sweet, and just a little bit like tamed lighting, although Arthur wasn’t sure if that was the kiss or the golden eyed boy’s magic, flicking against his lips like a butterfly trapped under glass. 

The boy looked at him, then smiled, a huff of a laugh spilling out of his chest. His hand found Arthur’s on the rock between them and tangled their fingers together.

They sat on the rock, then, saying nothing but sharing a shy smile, until afternoon faded slowly into sunset. Then, with a regretful sigh, the boy with the golden eyes stood.

“I’ve got - I’ve got to go.” He said quietly, “My mum wanted me back at dusk. There’s that feast tonight and she wants me at home and hidden before any of the people from Camelot wander too far from their tents into the village.”

Arthur could have said then, could have come clean that _he_ was one of the people from Camelot, but something altogether selfish gummed up his throat, making him think how this boy’s opinion might change if he knew that Arthur wasn’t simply _Wort._

“Okay,” He said, instead.

“It was - it was nice meeting you.” The boy stopped at the edge of the rock and picked up the pie dish.

Arthur smiled, “Yeah,” He said, “You too, when you weren’t entirely an idiot.”

The boy laughed then, soft and sweet and fond. “I’ll see you ‘round.”

And then he was gone, off through the trees like he’d never been, and Arthur finally, _finally_ , realised that he didn’t know his name.

* * *

Uther stooped his head low to his son where they both sat in the centre of the head table for the midsummer feast, “It has been three months,” the king said, with no context nor explanation.

“Three months, Father?” Arthur parroted, feeling as if he should know what his father is referring to.

Uther sent a pointed look to where Merlin was standing at the edge of the hall, eyes crinkling as he smiled and spoke with Guinevere, hands moving in the animated way he had when he forgot to control them in favour of what he was saying. Guinevere was laughing, or trying not to, it was difficult to tell because her hand was in front of her mouth and obscuring her expression.

Merlin mimed something to her as he kept speaking, Guinevere hit him on the arm, and said something back, although her eyes crinkled in poorly kept amusement.

Arthur smothered his own smile as he watched.

“The boy,” Uther called his son’s attention back, “It has been three months since you swore to me that boy was incompetent and that you would see him gone.” Uther leaned forward, and took a sip from his goblet of wine, “And yet -”

“Perhaps I was short-sighted,” Arthur said carefully, “Merlin is still a hopeless manservant to be sure, but he seems to have proven his worth in other ways.”

Merlin’s attention was caught by someone calling to him across the room, and he glanced to Guinevere, with a distinctly conspiratorial look, before he settled into the easy pose of a member of the household and made his way across to the person who had summoned him. He smiled a slightly fixed, polite smile as he listened to the visiting dignitary, then shook his head, expression earnest as he hastily explained something to the man.

“Yes, the boy is slowly making himself invaluable to you, it would seem.”

“He has his uses,” Arthur’s tone was deliberately non-committal.

There was a wound, still stinging, between Arthur and his father, the matter of the defeat of the black knight, and of Uther’s betrayal of Arthur’s confidence, that was making it difficult for Arthur to speak to his father as he should. 

“He is certainly loyal,” Uther said dismissively, “But perhaps it is true what they say that a servant can have loyalty or sense, but seldom possesses both.”

Arthur kept his face delicately blank.

“Gaius certainly enjoys his company,” Uther said, “So if you were to choose to have him leave your service, the boy would still have a place to go to.”

Arthur felt like he was moving around tripwires, lines that he could only just see in this conversation with his father, and any move too far might send arrows whistling into his unprotected heart.

“I have found,” He said carefully, “That he has a certain charm and nature that recommends him to others and has enabled me to see things in ways that I otherwise wouldn’t.”

“You can’t be suggesting that you use him as a spy, or _worse,_ a confidant. Arthur, I may be old but I’m no fool.”

“Nothing of the sort, Father,” Arthur took a sip of his own wine goblet as he watched Merlin reach for a pitcher and serve a woman in a low-bodiced dress, who had brown hair rippling over her shoulders in gentle waves. She leaned in close to his servant’s ear, whispering something, and Merlin smiled as he said something back, causing her to give a delighted giggle and pat his arm gently. Merlin stepped away from the table and back to his spot by the wall, quick eyes casting continuously about the room.

It was amazing how observant he was when he forgot that people were watching him in turn.

Arthur wondered what Merlin would say of the feast, later, what information the people here would share within the hearing range of a servant.

“I’m worried that you have a growing attachment for him.”

Arthur returned his attention to his father, “It’s like you say. He is immensely loyal and surely that should be something to reward.”

Uther gave a vague, dismissive wave of his hand. “It does you no good to become too attached, Arthur, especially not to a servant. A king must make his choices without the influence of all but his closest advisors, and even then their counsel should be sought only sparingly. A servant does not have the scope to give comment on matters of state or country.”

“Of course,” Arthur said, “I wouldn’t dream of seeking a fool’s counsel, in any case.”

It seemed to be the right thing to say to his father, although it discounted those moments when Merlin would see straight to the heart of the issues that gripped Arthur at times and say something profound and simple which could put his heart instantly at ease and give him confidence in the face of hopelessness. 

“Perhaps, as well, you might think of reining in his freedoms.” 

Arthur’s lips quirked in amusement at that, of the multiple times that Merlin had seemed to be in some inopportune or improbable spot or another, doing heaven-knows-what and somehow seeming to always, continually, be where Arthur needed him most, when he needed him most. 

“Perhaps I will,” Arthur lied to the king.

* * *

The knights limp out of the catacombs, helping each other up the steps, arms slung about each other, bruised and battered, but alive.

Gaius meets them at top of the staircase, and nods at Arthur’s hopeful look, and a wave like relief sweeps through him. “He is,” The physician says, answering Arthur’s unvoiced question, “But you must let him rest - he is groggy, Sire, and uncertain where he is.”

So instead of rushing to Merlin’s side, the knights head to their camp and set a small fire, and Gaius sees to each of them in turn, inspecting scrapes and bruises with a clucking tongue, but something of his own relief in his eyes. There’s always relief from Gaius, Arthur knows, when everyone comes home alive.

Leon roasts a rabbit on the flames, and throws some tubers into the coals, and the knights settle in, exhausted and aching, and Bedeviere passes around a wineskin that’s less watered than it should be. Arthur debriefs Gaius on the battle they had below, describes the beast for him and finally gets a name for it - _cockatrice_ \- before he explains what happened in the aftermath of its death - how they’d gone into the room beyond the arch and found druid bodies, drained and white, upon the ground. 

“It gains its strength from energy,” Gaius says, skirting carefully around the word _magic_ , “It saps the strength of others and uses it for itself. The more powerful the energy it takes, the stronger and faster it becomes.”

Arthur thinks of how quick the beast was, how it battered a score of men with just a sweep of its tail, and tries not to tremble at the implication.

“There was a… presence,” He says, delicately, “Something that helped us overcome the beast in the room. It’s the only reason we’re still alive.”

Gaius’ lips twitch in a smile, “I think,” He says, “That the energy the creature took must still have been very much linked to its source. If the creature was taking from Merlin, it would have been next to impossible for it to kill _you_ , Sire.”

Gaius leaves Arthur there, flummoxed, and goes to take some of the rabbit from the fire.

It is a long while before Arthur is able to stand and move away from the flames, head snaring again on _Merlin_ and _magic_ , but this time in a new light. He sees Merlin over and over again, cowering and afraid, but always, always nearby - sees him riding on a horse pulled up next to Arthur, or pressed close near his back in a tunnel as a mysterious wind blows fire towards a clay monster. He sees him falling to the ground, and branches falling from trees with perfect timing. He sees him just in the right place at the right time to stop a well-thrown knife, or drink from a poisoned cup.

And Arthur realises something.

Merlin isn’t evil - he’s just brave. 

Brave and very, _very_ stupid.

Arthur makes a disgusted noise in his throat and stands from the fire, moves away to where his _idiotic manservant_ is lying, eyes closed and too pale, on a bedroll.

He’s not asleep, Arthur can see that even as he sits down on the stool that Gaius has made out of an old log, but he is resting, even though as Arthur approaches, his eyes creak open into something that’s very close to wariness.

Arthur sighs, and thinks then that there are two entirely different ways that the next conversation could go. He thinks about a boy he met when he was eight in a village where no-one knew his name, about golden eyes and stealing pies and a kiss next to the water. He knows that if he tells this story, even if he never admits to knowing that it was Merlin, _Merlin_ would know that the second boy in the story was Arthur and that Arthur had seen the kindness of magic long before he saw it as dark. There could be a moment, gentle and soft under the moon, where slowly, slowly, the secrets would all come clean between them, or even if that didn’t happen, there would be an easing of spirit, and a new, quiet camaraderie that could bloom, soft and complicated as a rose.

There could even be a touch, if Merlin allowed it, gentle and sweet in the dark. Merlin could remember that he was Arthur’s first kiss, if such a childish kiss could be called it, and perhaps it would be the beginnings of something sweet and private and warm between them, something that was theirs and only theirs alone and damn the consequences.

But Arthur thinks of Uther, of the noose, of a crossbow bolt in the woods and he _knows_.

It would be gentle to tell Merlin that story, it would be sweet to let Merlin know he had nothing to fear from Arthur, but it would not be kind.

“When I was fourteen,” Says Arthur, instead, “A man came to Camelot with a bird on his arm.”

Merlin’s sharp gaze lifts to him, and Arthur hides his face as he speaks without interruption of a man called Galahad who had a beautiful bird and a tattoo high on his thigh where no-one could see it. He tells Merlin the story of a man who taught him how to fly a bird, how it is about the trust between the falconer and the falcon, and how any fear between them would result in the bird never returning to the man who flew it. He tells Merlin of standing on a wall and being scolded about the place of kings and of their choices, of the first time a gyrfalcon had flown back and landed on his arm and how he’d been so startled he’d nearly dropped it in surprise. 

He tells of the man giving him a Samhain gift, a beautifully embossed leather arm guard, and of the way that Uther had made him throw it into the fire not a month later. He tells of the excitement that he had smothered when the man had taken Arthur and Uther to the woods to demonstrate just how well Arthur flew his hunting bird, and how that trip had ended with blood seeping into snow.

Merlin doesn’t say anything while Arthur talks, although he pales when Arthur reaches for quiet descriptions of murder and cold, calculated violence. As Arthur winds the story down, Merlin sits up, quiet and thoughtful, and says softly, ever so softly, 

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You must never let anyone know, Merlin, that you are sympathetic to those with magic.” Arthur says quietly.

It’s not the words that he wants to say, but it is the kind alternative. It’s the white lie to help Merlin hide, even if Merlin doesn’t know it.

But Merlin is anything if not surprising, and his eyes narrow a little where he sit on the bedroll, fidgeting with the woolen blanket over his legs.

“You're sympathetic too, at least for some of them,” He says quietly, hand reaching forward to rest on Arthur’s knee, and for the first time in a week Arthur doesn’t flinch at the touch, “Aren’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Arthur replies, “Not while my father is king.”

There’s a look of agony that flashes through Merlin’s eyes, because Merlin knows as well as Arthur does that what Arthur says is the truth, and it’s the wedge that will forever drive between them.

Still, he takes Merlin’s hand in his own and rubs his thumb along the other man’s wrist, feels the delicate, bird-like bones beneath smooth, pale skin. It’s not much, he knows, and it’s something he very much should never do, but he’s tired and heartsore and he _needs_ this with a selfishness that he can’t quite bring himself to deny.

Merlin - uncanny, foolish, reckless, selfless Merlin - seems to understand more than Arthur says, and flips his hand, tangling their fingers together in a gesture as intimate as a lover’s. 

They stay like that in the moonlight, quiet and still, and it is enough, Arthur thinks, at least for now, that he does nothing, and trusts his bird to fly.


End file.
